Go Overnight

PAST glories can be a double-edged sword. Corks Metropole retains the elegant façade of its heyday, a fairly fine staircase, and its wonderful location: the River Lee to the rear, McCurtain Street (with the fabulous Isaac’s restaurant nearby, and the equally wonderful, but in a different way, Dan Lowry’s Barnext door).

But, as they say on those financial adverts, past performance is no guarantee of future success and so I booked with trepidation.

Management of the Metropole has been taken over by The Gresham, giving it a link to another grand old dame of a hotel, and a new name: The Gresham Metropole. I’m not sure what else the association has achieved. Never quite certain of the difference between “executive” and “standard”, I bypassed internet booking and phoned.

A helpful person told me that the standard rooms hadnt been refurbished but did have river views. The executive ones had been done up but were at the front of the hotel, so could be noisier.

A high-up executive room could be as quiet as a standard, she agreed. I booked a standard, which is actually called a “riverview”, and then changed my mind. A vision of an unrefurbished, unloved, overused room had swum into my mind, and it was a vision that even the river’s promise couldn’t assuage.

My executive turned out to be a fairly good-sized room, decorated in standard style. Brown-ish and cream-ish, hints of gold (represented in an artwork that someone may have described as “Modern”), a double and single bed, tea and coffee facilities.

There was an empty minibar – now increasingly common, it makes me wonder just how much trouble full minibars have caused in their time

The pale wood headboards were striped with brown leatherette, and there were taffeta-ey curtains, both of which told me a designer had had a hand in things, but it was a strangely disheartening mix of old fashioned and generic contemporary. Too much like a thousand and one other hotel rooms, it could have been pretty much anywhere. The view located it somewhat: we looked onto a side street and, opposite, someone in a flat had put several pairs runners on the window sill to air.

After one or two drinks at Dan Lowry’s, we headed to the Metropole bar, which, like the hotel, hovers on the edge of being special.

Sit outside on a sunny day and you can begin to feel quite cosmopolitan. Inside on a chilly evening, the barman served us, and almost before the money was in the till, shooed us to the lobby. “You can’t stay here, I’m closing.”

I slept well, better than I had a right to after all the wine. In the morning I discovered the bathroom was very nice, with a Haven brand of toiletries, which were grand.

Breakfast showed me what I was missing with the river view (much more pleasant at high tide than low), and was adequate but not great.

They don’t do espresso coffee, so I was still waking up as I negotiated the patterned carpets and long corridors of brown doors.

Checking out, I asked to see one of the unrefurbished rooms, but apparently Mama Mia at the Marquee meant they were completely full. There are also, apparently, less expensive inner rooms, that are quiet, but “darker”.

The staff give a good Cork welcome, and are helpful and friendly and, with the colder light of day, I began to appreciate the barman’s urgent need to remove us from his space.

But I walked out into the sunny city morning thinking, why can’t the Metropole be glamourous again? It doesn’t have to cost the earth but why can’t it have just a little more soul?

WhereGresham Metropole Hotel, Cork, 021 4643700, gresham-hotels.com

WhatThree-star hotel

Rooms112 rooms including four suites

Best ratesfrom €79 room only, depending on dates and availability

Restaurant and barRiverview restaurant (breakfast only), Met Bar for drinks, snacks, lunch and full à la carte dinner.

Child friendlinessChildren welcome, no particular facilities

AccessRestricted access due to age of hotel

AmenitiesFree wi-fi , parking nearby at €7.50 for 24 hours, swimming pool and leisure centre at €5 a day, conferencing facilities

• Go Overnights are reviewed anonymously and paid for by The Irish Times