Nanjing Baliyuanshu.Vogue Hotspring Hotel

This is a quite special hotel featuring large, tall rooms with private mineral spring jacuzzis, nice design all over, sumptuous breakfast and countryside surroundings. Just don't count on communicate in an other language than Chinese. Also, although the hotel advertises free shuttle from airport, it's an uphill battle to get this service. Finally, the staff doesn't tell you that you can get a free shuttle service to the nearest railway and metro stations, instead suggests taxis (about $20 one way to the Nanjing city center). Fitness center and swimming pools are $15 extra.

We have here for 1 day to relax and unwind. The hotel is up a scenic hill dotted with private houses. The staff were friendly and I scheduled for the hotel car to drop us off the next day at the train station. But because of light snow over night, the mountain roads were iced up the next day and they refused to drive us down in the morning, which was a suprise to me. They were polite but kept repeating the same thing, and were not trying to help us find a way to catch our train. I don't blame them for the weather but I'm quite annoyed at their unhelpful attitude and lack of prior notice. Luckly my family were able to pick us up, and I had gotten up early, so we were able to get to the train station in time. And by the way, my uncle managed to drive up and down just fine when he picked us up... Beside that incident, the rest of the stay was pleasant. Our room was on the ground floor, it was huge with a king size bed. I'm not sure how real the hot spring water is, but it was quite comfortable just to be in a big tub by the window, watching the snow outside. The tub is a bit old and there's some sewer gas coming out of the drain, which was a turn off. The AC was a little bit noisy but that was probably because it was so quiet here at night otherwise. We had dinner at the hotspring spa club restaurant, which was so so. It's a banquet style menu with a lot of very exotic animals like water snake, porcupine and monkey brain (kinda scary), but we just ate some under seasoned vegetable dishes. Unless you have a car, you're pretty much stuck eating here. Their breakfast buffet was very good. The pastries were freshly made on site, and the variety and quality were all excellent. We were pleasantly suprised after the dinner experience. The spa club has a nice big swimming pool and 2 small hot spring pools, but I prefer to soak privately in my room. Overall we enjoyed our 1 night stay. I think we'd be really bored if were stayed any longer.