Zurich Marriott Hotel – A room with a view

In Zurich, I stayed at Zurich Marriott Hotel. I usually prefer boutique hotels over chains, but I found a really good rate online. Besides, Marriott is one of the chains that I’ve only had good experiences with in the past, so I was comfortable with my choice.

The young man, who was checking me in, noticed that the booking had been made for two persons in a double room, so I confessed, that I always do that, even when I’m traveling solo. I explained to him that it’s an old habit after some unfortunate experiences with single rooms but also double rooms booked for 1 person. If you’re traveling solo and you’re not a business traveler in the upper tier of a loyalty program, it’s my impression that some hotels deliberately give you the least attractive rooms.

He assured me that this was of course never the case at Marriott, but as we were speaking, he was in fact able to offer me a choice. Turned out he had a very nice room on the 16^th floor in the main building. It was smaller than the room I had originally booked and with a queen bed instead of a king bed, but it had a great view of the lake. Would I be interested? Yes, please! Most of the photos I took seem to have gone missing in cyberspace, and the only ones I’ve managed to retrieve are the ones of the view, which, as you can see, was quite impressive.

One evening I went for dinner at the Swiss restaurant eCHo at the hotel. It was my first encounter with rösti, which is a Swiss dish made with grated potatoes. I had it with a topping of ham and cheese, and it was delicious. I didn’t bring my camera, but I figured I would encounter plenty of good rösti on my trip. Now the rösti at the hotel was actually among the nicest I’ve had, so I’m sorry that I don’t have a photo to show you.

The hotel was very nice in that typical Marriott-business-casual kind of way. It was smaller than most other Marriott hotels I’ve stayed at, and the staff was very friendly and seemed genuinely interested in getting to know you. The immediate neighborhood wasn’t the most interesting, but Zurich isn’t very big, and most of the things I wanted to see were only a short walk away. I didn’t spend a lot of time at the hotel, as I was busy exploring Zurich, but the points of contact I had, were all very pleasant, and I wouldn’t hesitate staying there again.