Cilindar Apartments

You can walk around town easily from this spot right in the center. We had a large apartment with a separate couch and lots of room, in a place that's part hostel and part individual apartments. There's a simple DIY breakfast upstairs with the other guests. No parking on site, so you need to leave your car in a garage, which costs €30 a day.

Just bear in mind that this is above a hostel on a busy street lined with restaurants and bars, so it can get very loud. The rooms themselves are spacious, good, and clean. The young staff were really nice, helpful, and flexible.

The apartment itself was okay, but the whole stay was unpleasant and badly handled. It wasn't very clean either. There was a pile of used pillows in my wardrobe, including one with a blood stain. On a hot day, one air conditioner wasn't enough, especially with one double bed up the stairs. My room had no working outlets for charging devices, so I could only charge them in the living room. The air conditioning only worked there too, and couldn't be set below 18 degrees. The kitchen was missing basic cooking tools like a spatula, extractor fan, and knife for cutting meat. The toilet was small and its door was falling apart. There was also a power plate and an old TV outside my door. The apartment was on the first floor, while reception was on the third. The lift was tiny, painfully slow, and its door kept closing on people getting in. Finding Apartments Cilindar was a struggle: it's tucked into a passageway with no private entrance, and Google Maps kept telling us we were 100 meters away while we went around in circles. Asking nearby people and shop workers got us nowhere, since nobody knew it. The host didn't respond when we asked for help. When I told the staff how long it took us to find the place, they said they knew everyone had this problem, but did nothing about it. They were very unprofessional and showed no customer care. Our apartment also wasn't set up for the six people on our booking, only four, so we lost more time at reception. Instead of admitting the mistake, they said they hadn't made the sofa into a bed in case we wanted to use it as a sofa and that we could do it ourselves later. That made no sense, and it wasn't true: there were no towels or sheets, or even coffee, for the fifth and sixth guests. I had to insist they prepare the sofa bed then and there, wasting more of our limited time in Zagreb. When we complained, they didn't respond, and offered neither an apology nor compensation. I feel like our time was stolen. They have a lot to learn about treating guests and running this business, so I'd avoid the place and look elsewhere.

It's right in the center and was very clean, with all the amenities we needed. The manager was helpful and let us leave our bags in the room after checkout until we left the city that evening. I'd happily stay again.