Living Hotel an der Oper by Derag

Plenty of Room and Close to City Center

- Bed was comfortable. It's pretty soft so for people who want really hard beds, this place might not be good to choose. - Included refrigerator. Being someone who doesn't eat very much, it's nice to store food, there's a microwave for reheating. You can even get cold drinks as Europe hardly ever have ice. - Centralized heating, you can set a default temperature much like a regular hotel room. - Location. It's about a block from the State Opera House and near multiple Karlsplatz entrances. Closest one that you won't have to wait to cross the street is the exit on Elizabeth-Strabe. - Roomy. I got an apartment which might still be pretty large for 2-3 people. You will usually see a whole family of 3+ stay here. - Daily House-Keeping. I usually put my "Do Not Disturb" sign, but if you don't, the hotel staff will go into the apartment, vacuum, straighten out the beds, mop the bathroom floor if wet, and take away trash. Make sure to put away everything from the counters and tables if you don't want them tossed. - I really liked one of the staff members at the desk. He was very helpful when I asked him questions. The others didn't seem like they were comfortable speaking English as I would normally get short one or two word answers while I would see them be more helpful with questions they know the answer to (Ex. regarding construction). - Decoration. I liked the orchids in the room and the glossed-glass divider really complimented the look.

- Spotty internet. Only chance you get internet is in the evening time so for the people who need to search for travel/tourist information or plane check-ins, better do them at those times. During the day, you sometimes won't get any internet at all. I'm not sure if this is normal or not considering the hotel construction. - Hard to find. Due to the hotel construction, for someone who has never been to Vienna, it was hard to find the building as the large sign at the front is usually covered up by construction. Unless you've been there before, it's hard to know that you have to go to the side of the building past a wooden door in order to get to the check-in and check-out office. It wasn't until the end of my week stay, did I see paper signs being put around the building pointing to the temporary hotel entrance door. - No staff notifications. For any business, if there's construction, every employee should be notified of any annoyances and non-emergencies/drills. For two days during my week stay, there were random alarms blaring loudly for about a minute. One of those times, it woke me up. Customers should be notified about this prior to the event in the chance where it may have been a real emergency. - Semi-clean. It's clean enough for an average person, but I'm part germaphobe. When I looked at the apartment, there were certain stains all over the place (Ex. on the rugs and sofas). I also brought new slippers to use and by the end of the trip, it was pretty much greyed out which means most likely the floors are only swept/vacuumed and never mopped. The refrigerator had a stench or maybe old food from previous customers that I think a nice box of baking soda for every refrigerator would be enough to take the smell away. The restroom (both toilet-room and shower-room) also left a certain mildew smell. Considering the small hole patches on the tile walls, I forsee the state of the apartment may get worse if nothing else is done to keep the apartment in better condition. - Slow elevator. It only fits 3 people and it takes awhile for it to go up and down. The elevator also doesn't have an up button so even if you want to walk up some flights of stairs, you would have to press the down button and hope no one's going down in order to go up to your floor. - Decoration. I already expected it considering the photos, but the face paintings tend to be creepy like eyes following you around the room. I had Skype calls and some people also pointed out the paintings and why there are so many faces staring at you.