The Protea Hatfield seemed promising at first, but I left the next morning less than impressed.

Rooms have elegant, modernist decor, and boast high-backed leather desk chairs, but not much else. This is because the standard rooms are TINY (too bad I didn’t ask about the square footage before I arrived, or I would have upgraded to something larger) and lacking in many ways.

First, the room stank of wet dog – though it was more likely vapors from an improperly cleaned shower drain. Instead of asking to change rooms, I opted to endure it all night since it was late when I checked in, and I was tired. The air con helped dissipate the smell to a certain extent, but that caused its own set of problems – the a/c was either too hot or too cold, and at a weird angle to the bed, so hard to operate via the remote control.

The lights were also hard to operate independently of each other – it seemed that they were either all on, or all off, and require a card key in a slot to operate. At least the bed was comfortable, though as I fell asleep I was not pleased to find that the walls were so thin that I could hear my neighbor’s TV better than the one in my own room. I awoke only to find a weak stream of water from the inadequate shower head, and nowhere on the sink to place a bar of soap!

The morning coffee was the only real high point of my stay. And the location. The Protea Hatfield is literally a five-minute walk from the Hatfield Gautrain station, and practically on the campus of the University of Pretoria. There are lots of shops and restaurants nearby, though nothing that would quality as fine dining.

All in all this hotel was better than staying in a hostel, but not by a big margin.