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Having wanted to stay at the 4* Mercure St Pauls hotel for some time, I finally had an excuse to do so when my girlfriend, Emma, bought us a weekend stay for my birthday. We stayed there on a Saturday night in January 2011.
When booking through a hotel comparison website, you might expect to pay anything between £60 and £100 per night for a double room depending on the day of the week and the time of year.
Location
Mercure St Pauls is arguably the best located hotel in the heart of Sheffield city centre.
It is located next to both the Winter Garden and the Peace Gardens and besides the Town Hall. The Lyceum and Crucible theatres are literally less than a 1 minute walk away across Tudor Square, while a 5 minute walk takes you to the nearest Supertram stops at Cathedral or City Hall.
There are dozens of bars, restaurants and shops within a few minutes walk of the hotel.
Bedroom
Compared to most hotels I've stayed at, I would say that the rooms at Mercure St Pauls are very spacious.
In common with many hotels these days, our double room featured two single beds pushed together rather than a double bed. Other furniture in the room included a double wardrobe, a fridge, a work desk and chair, two armchairs, a small sofa and a large flat screen TV. There was also an ironing board and a hairdryer, as well as a kettle and complimentary coffee, tea and flapjacks.
As well as having a large window (with excellent views over the Peace Gardens) which gave the room plenty of natural light, the room also featured a handful of lamps and lights. There were ample power sockets for recharging electricals overnight.
Room temperature can be individually controlled via a panel on the wall.
The en-suite bathroom featured both a bathtub and a shower cubicle, a washbasin, a toilet and a heated towel rack (with a couple of towels each). It was modern and spotlessly clean. Unusually for a bathroom, a speaker piped in the sound from the TV in the bedroom (this could be turned on and off as per your preference).
Gym and Spa Facilities
The room rate included access to the hotel's gym and spa facilities. Without a room booking, access to these facilities would ordinarily cost £25 per person at weekends.
We took advantage of the spa facilities on the Saturday afternoon of our stay. Towels are provided free of charge at the spa reception area when you sign in, but you'll need a £1 coin (refundable) to operate the lockers in the changing rooms.
The spa facilities include:
Steam Room – very hot and with a strong eucalyptus aroma;
Aroma Grotto – neither as hot as the steam room, nor (despite its name) anywhere near as aromatic;
Sauna – an ideal temperature and large enough to accommodate between 4 and 6 people at a time;
Ice Igloo – a small, freezing cold room with an ice dispenser providing ice to rub into your skin's pores;
Experience Shower – a shower with "fragrance", "drench" (hot tropical rain) and "cold" settings;
Swimming Pool – a decent size for swimming lengths, but colder than I'd have liked it to be;
Sun Loungers – very comfortable reclining sun loungers are located throughout the spa area;
Drinking water – there is a tap dispensing drinking water in the spa area.
All in all, the spa facilities are very good considering that they are included in the room rate. We've been to better spas, with wider ranging facilities, and we'd perhaps have been a little disappointed had we paid the £25 per person entrance fee, but in the circumstances we were more than satisfied.
General
Our room rate didn't include breakfast. If you don't get breakfast included, it can be purchased additionally, although I believe it is expensive and I suspect that you could get a better value breakfast at a nearby cafe in the city centre.
There are limited car parking spaces immediately outside the hotel, but there are several public car parks nearby in the city centre.
The ground floor houses an impressive Champagne Bar and Restaurant, with piano music in the evenings and windows looking directly into the adjacent Winter Garden.
Despite being ranked 13th (out of 55 Sheffield hotels) on TripAdvisor at the time of writing, I would suggest that Mercure St Pauls, along with the Leopold Hotel, is one of the two best city centre hotels in terms of convenient location and quality of facilities.
Mercure St Pauls is one of Sheffield city centre's finest hotels. Its location next to the Winter Garden and Peace Gardens is unbeatable. Rooms are spacious and well furnished and the spa facilities are very good. Highly recommended!
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