Hotel Akropol Palac, Lublin

I stayed at their residential rooms, planned for 3 people with 3 single beds, from June 26 to June 29. The room was quite small, with barely enough space to move from the door to the toilet to the bed. There was no ventilation either in the room itself or in the bathroom, apart from the window in the room that could be opened. It was moist in the bathroom all the time, with small pools of water on the floor never drying after shower. The window ventilation worked reasonably well until the last night of my stay, when a neighbouring farmer decided to burn same plant waste and filled the surroundings with smoke. Therefore, I was made to wake up at about 3 am and shut the window completely, to avoid respiratory problems. I could notice no traces of any cleaning effort in my room during my stay, as several dead insects remained quite prominently in the very same places where they happened to drop dead on the floor. The residential used mattress covers instead of bed sheets, quite inappropriately, although the rest of bed linen was in order. The buffet breakfast was OK, on the days when I could ask someone for yoghurt and cold milk, which did not happen every day.

Hotel Ak Altyn Plaza, Ashgabat

I stayed in this hotel from May 26 to May 29, 2013. Pros: a good view from the 8th floor on the city and the nearby hills, air-conditioning, continental breakfast. Cons: the hotel has no rooms for non-smokers, as it is allowed to smoke in every room; no ventilation in the rooms -- air conditioning only recirculates the air, and there is no way you can open a window; the plug in the bathtub was absent - taken away because its mechanism was broken; after multiple consultations with the reception and the technicians and some 20h of waiting I finally got a simple rubber plug in substitution of the fancy original; unexpectedly fancy lighting on the ceiling -- I had  to switch it on and off at least 3 times before I got what I wanted -- namely, light on to the maximum brightness, on the first attempt you only get some blue LEDs and stay wondering whether that is all you will ever get; and finally, beware of the teabags in plain view on the table -- contrary to every other hotel I know, here they will charge you US$ 2,00 for each bag. They don't recommend to drink tap water in Turkmenistan, therefore hotel provides electric jugs in each room -- notwithstanding my technical background, I also had problems with that, which were not solved by their technician either -- sometimes the jug would not come on. In such cases, their restaurant provides you with hot water -- free of charge.