We had a great weekend, walking the Dunes, biking, the weather great which helped, the beach bar at Schoorl at Sea is perfect, and Bergen on Sea is also a nice destination, if you want an active weekend at the Dutch coast we can recommend this place.
Merlet hotel and restaurant is a nice place to stay, we had a good time, but adding a Michelin Star and booking a Gastronomic weekend comes with expectations, the bill for a 2 person, 2 nights passed 4 numbers, so did the deliver?
Friendliness; 100%
Suite room; 85%
Surrounding and nature; 100%
What can be improved, making the place great instead of good?
- There are only 2 big towels in the room, have a shower after a long walk and in the morning you have to use a cold and slightly wet towel, for this price and level there should be enough towels in the room.
- The sauna, swimming pool area is old and worn out, we read some bad reviews online and they are correct, the sauna is not running like in other places where they switch it on in the afternoon, so you need to warm it 30 minutes before you want to use it, there are towels but no water for drinking, so we had to go up and get our own bottles. Unfortunate the drainage of the shower in the sauna area did not work so the whole pace got flooded. Merlet should not sell it selves based on these facilities and they will disappoint people with the quality, it does not match the rest of the service.
- The tv’s in the room are from 1985, lucky we did not bother for it, but if you do you will be turned off.
- We enjoy 2 nights in the Michelin start restaurant with great food, but where surprised the amuses where the same the second night, an exact repeat, when we booked the recommendation was to book this arrangement for 3 nights, would we get the same for 3 nights? At this level we would have expected more of a surprise, the staff words this it is the same as yesterday... surely Michelin would not approve.
Having said this all I would like to repeat we had a great weekend, we got what we came for, a nice re;ax in North Holland with plenty of fresh air and just hope this review will help Merlet to improve a few points that need attention and to help readers making their choice.