Bamboo Garden Hotel

Lovely hotel and beautiful grounds. Well located in relation to the subway, and walking distance to the Bell and Drum Towers. The hotel is down a quiet hutong, and there are lots of restaurants nearby on the main street. Some other reviews were negative about the breakfast at the Bamboo Garden. I have to disagree wholeheartedly! They have an extensive breakfast buffet with many choices, all of which we enjoyed. It's not a Western breakfast with bacon, eggs and waffles. It's a Chinese breakfast with stir-fried noodles, vegetables (which may not be familiar to Westerners, but were delicious), rice and spring rolls, because guess what - you're in China.

Our upstairs neighbors disturbed us one morning because they apparently thought there's no problem doing jumping jacks at 6:00 a.m. Hardly the fault of the hotel though.

The place is lovely with an internal garden that gives you peace and silence although you are in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world. Room was big and clean.

Breakfast was extra and expensive. Personnel was not very helpful, they clearly took advantage of us. We asked for ways to reach the Great Wall and they insisted that we could only go by private car which they provided and was very expensive. We discovered on site that there were also busses. Our bad for trusting them. Also wifi connection never worked properly, though that seems a constant in China so probably related to compatibility with European devices. Suggestion to buy a local sim if you stay long.