Review: Hotel Alpenblick

My husband and I spent one night at Hotel Alpenblick in Zermatt, Switzerland while on our European honeymoon in August 2015. Because we were only staying in Zermatt in order to catch the Glacier Express scenic train the next morning, we logged onto Expedia in search of a hotel within walking distance to the train station, an overall good rating and reasonable nightly rate. For those of you who have started planning your trip to Zermatt, you'll know that finding a hotel within walking distance to the train station is easy, so is finding a hotel with a good (or even great) rating. Finding an inexpensive hotel is another story.

Check-in was a smooth process. The staff were friendly and even though English was not their first language, I do not recall any communication problems.

Although slightly dated, the hotel has a charm to it and more importantly, I found it to be very clean. While the hotel itself is smoke-free, people do smoke on their balconies. If you're easily bothered by the smell of smoke, you'll want to keep your balcony door shut.

Hotel Alpenblick has 32 rooms and apparently a sauna, business center and dry cleaning services. You also have the option to do your own laundry - you will have to go to reception to get the key and the washer and dryer are across the street.

In-room amenities include a flat screen television with cable, a mini-fridge, hair dryer, telephone and WiFi. Personally, I found the WiFi connection to be awful - it was hard to connect to and when we did manage to get on it was painfully slow.

Our hotel room may not have had an alarm clock (oddly, none of our accommodations in Switzerland had alarm clocks - what's up with that?), it did have a fantastic view of the Matterhorn.

When I walk into a hotel room I always eye up the bed and try to decide whether or not it is going to be comfortable. Although the bed was well made, I had a strange feeling that I wasn't going to find it comfortable. Thankfully, this feeling was wrong. I had a wonderful sleep - I actually went to bed with a sore neck and woke up feeling much better.

A free breakfast buffet is included in the price of the room. We went prior to checking out and I found it to be very basic and underwhelming - I ended up having a small amount of fruit and a glass of juice.

The one thing that stands out in my mind about Hotel Alpenblick more than anything else is the tap water - I found the tap water here to be delicious - the most delicious water I've ever had! For anyone else who has stayed here, I'd love to know if you had the same experience.

Like most hotels, the nightly rate will depend on the date you visit. We didn't realize when planning our trip that our visit was during the Zermatt Folklore Festival, our visit also fell on a weekend. As previously mentioned, we secured our booking using Expedia and were told it would cost $198CDN, which would be due when we checked out. When it came time to pay we were asked if we would like to pay in Canadian currency. We didn't really have a preference but since it was offered, we accepted. Looking at the receipt on the train a few hours later we noticed in relatively small print that because we paid in our own currency, the hotel charged an additional 3% - had we paid in the local currency, Visa would have only charged 2.5%.

Overall, my husband and I had a good stay at Hotel Alpenblick in Zermatt. I'll admit, it wasn't anything special but it met our standards, it was quiet, clean and compared to other hotels in the area, the price was reasonable.