Tag Archive Castle Hotel

ByGD

Wallpaper

In Qingdao, my daughter and I stayed at the Castle Hotel, a European-style hotel that (in theory) catered to foreigners. (In practice, we saw maybe three other Western visitors while we were there.)

Although I thought this one was a fairly typical example of the Asian hotel breakfast (a mixture of Chinese, Continental, and English breakfast foods), my daughter was new to the concept of the hotel breakfast buffet. She loved that she could have eggs and sausage and shrimp with the heads still on and Chinese pork buns for breakfast. Plus there was cake! For breakfast! And I let her eat it! (Because I’m a cheapskate who was counting on the free breakfast to carry us all the way to dinner.)

It immediately became her favorite thing about our trip, and she still talks about it to this day. I on the other hand, thought the best thing about our hotel dining room was Astro Turf wallpaper.

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Hotel Room

Hotel Room in Qingdao

I have a really hard time booking hotels because I’ve spent so much of my life traveling solo and sleeping in dorms. But I totally scored when I took my daughter to China. We booked a room in the Castle Hotel in Qingdao. Formerly guest housing in the German governor’s estate, the European-inspired Castle Hotel was our home base and refuge. I used my Chase travel card and points to pay for the room, so our week and a half stay there ended up costing about $100.