This hotel was once the Paul U Bergström (PUB) department store. One famous customer was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin. On his famous journey to Petrograd (in a “sealed“ carriage), he briefly stopped in Stockholm and bought an umbrella here. PUB also employed a young sales girl called Greta Lovisa Gustafson, later immortalised as Greta Garbo. I think it is safe to say that Greta Garbo has done much more for the world and to make the world a better place than Lenin ever did. (Incidentally, in the early 1970s, my family encountered Greta Garbo in Klosters in Switzerland. We never met Lenin…)
How about the breakfast? As was to be expected, a nice buffet with a good variety of hot and cold dishes, cold cuts, cheese, vegetables, pancakes et cetera. An excellent omelette bar with a very nice omelette. Everything fresh and well prepared. Strangely for a Swedish hotel breakfast, no salmon or herring. Tea is bags only of course,, and for some reason, this hotel chain (Scandic) insists on serving tea in tiny cups possibly suitable for coffee, but not for a morning cup of tea. Also, no saucers where you can deposit your teabag after finished brewing your tea. The atmosphere was slightly spoiled by the officious waitress who, after I had been let in, came up to me and informed me that seating was not free and I had to sit somewhere else and that I should check in for the breakfast, which I had already done. She made it clear that she didn’t believe me. The second day, I returned to my table after fetching fruit, to find my plate, cutlery and cup taken away, which I find unnecessary as my iPad on the table showed that I had not left. The music was also both unnecessary and — at times — loud. So while the food was good, the ambience reduces what should have been a goodr score. Moreover, the hotel boasts about its breakfast. Given that, they should do better. I give a decent but by no means spectacular 6/10.