Hotel Pula

The breakfast has lots of options, but the look of the place needs work. Those ancient carpets in the halls seem to have some stories to tell, and I’m not sure I’d want to be part of them. This place really needs some love.

Please, find another hotel. I made a huge mistake choosing this place, thinking it was only two nights and how bad could it be? Worse than I expected. I paid 125€/night, which is absurd for what I got. It felt more like a motel than a hotel, with terrible service and dirty rooms. Everything about this place being stuck in 1970 makes 50€/night seem more reasonable. The smell of old communist furniture hit me as soon as I walked into reception. I got my key and went up to a room that smelled of mold. The wooden window frames and balcony door looked like a 12-year-old had painted them. There was paint on the single-pane glass, which shook whenever someone closed a door too hard. The bathroom was maybe a 6/10, but the toilet was an old communist one from the 80s that wouldn’t flush number two. I had to flush it three times or let it soak. The food might get a 5. You can have a sandwich or sausage, but the machine sodas were disgusting, and the water tasted like rust. The coffee is hard to describe. It smelled like diesel and tasted like battery acid, though two packs of sugar made it drinkable. There’s an espresso machine by the terrace exit, but it costs 4€. You can’t have the free coffee there, only the coffee you buy. I found that pretty funny. You’re not allowed to eat there either, not even sponge cake, and you can’t bring anything to your room. There’s no safe or refrigerator in the room. The worst part, and why I’m writing this review, is the bed bugs. On the day I woke up to leave I had a few bites and thought they were something else, which was my fault. Today I woke up in a clean Airbnb in Split with a bed bug next to my pillow, two in my luggage, and some fresh bites. Don’t stay here. Spend your money more wisely than I did. Read the other review someone left a month before mine, it’s spot on. I had to censor myself a lot to write this.

For over 100 euros a night, this place needs to do better. I feel bad leaving such a poor review, but this was one of the worst experiences I’ve had. The hotel feels like an old Soviet era building frozen in 1986, and the staff gave me the same impression. No one could explain why I wasn’t allowed to take my coffee to my room. There’s no coffee before 7 AM, when the restaurant opens. Everything was filthy, with bugs in the room, dusty surfaces, dirty walls, and worn out fixtures. I found three long hairs on the bed and two more in the bathtub. There were marks on the walls that might have been blood from other people squashing roaches or bugs. Absolutely disgusting. The AC barely cooled the room, like an asthmatic mouse at full power. The windows and doors looked like something I hadn’t seen since the 90s. The food was horrible too, and the plates in the restaurant belong in a museum. The dispenser’s Coke came out like sludge, and the Apple juice was either sludge or extremely sweet. Stick to water. The coffee machine in the restaurant was an insult to coffee, and why does everything have sugar in it?

The staff were friendly, and the hotel was generally clean. It’s worn out now, but it makes no pretenses. It must have been lovely in its day. The rooms are basic, and the bathroom is old but functional. There’s a nice looking pool, though I didn’t try it.