Apartment Review: Brno, Czech Republic

Recently, I spent a few weeks in Brno, Czech Republic. It was a great little city and I would definitely recommend a visit. I’ll have a “things to do” post in the next couple of weeks for Brno. I could have booked a hotel, but staying in an apartment was cheaper and it had more amenities I look for in an extended stay.

Apartment Review: Brno

Booking:

I typically book my apartments though Airbnb, because they have a lot of options. I actually stumbled upon this apartment on Airbnb, but I did not book this through Airbnb. I decided to check hotels.com to see what options were available, since I have the Capital One Venture card and I would earn 10x miles on my stay.

When I started searching hotels.com, I didn’t think I’d stumble across the same apartment, but I did! To even one up the Airbnb listing, it had a cheaper cost per night too! My total for 15 nights was $1,106.24

By booking using my Capital One Venture card, I earned a total of 10,888 miles. I had to change my dates of my trip, which caused a slight increase to my cost, but it wasn’t too much.

I had opened the Capital One Venture card for my wife and myself because of the sign up bonus. At the time it was 40,000 miles and I moved Kristin’s points to my Capital One account. I was able to redeem my Capital One miles for this stay.

Redeeming 102,902 miles saved me $1,029.02 for this stay. Bringing my out of pocket total on a 15 night apartment stay to $77.22, or just a little over $5 per night.

On top of that, I earned 1 “free night” from Hotels.com valued at $66, and I am 5 nights closer to my next free night.

That is a solid win in my book!

If you book stays through Airbnb, here are some tips to saving some money when booking your Airbnb.

Arrival:

When we arrived at the apartment in Brno, the apartment manager met us at the front with the keys. They gave us a tour of the apartment and had information about the city.

There were a few maps in the apartment, with tips on some smaller restaurants in the area. We might not have found out about these restaurants, which were amazingly good!

Location:

The apartment (there’s a pin on the map), was very close to the town center and many of the larger sites. It was close to the public transportation and the city wasn’t crowded with people.

I felt the location was absolutely perfect and would recommend staying in this area if you were headed to Brno. I don’t believe you’d be disappointed

The Apartment:

Kitchen:

The kitchen had everything you would need to cook your meals in the apartment. It had plenty of pots, but only 1 pan. There were plenty of dishes and cups (for coffee and other drinks).

There were even some snacks and cereal in one of the drawers. The smaller dishwasher was great. We don’t use the dishwasher at home, but if we could find one like this in the States, I would really consider it!

The small refrigerator was perfect for holding our groceries and inside there was even a small freezer to hold a small amount of frozen items.

You can see there is a dining table, but the weather was so nice during our stay, we ate on the balcony instead.

My biggest complaint would be the inconsistency of heat coming from the stove top. I’d cook once and the temperature would be just fine, another time the pan would get much hotter, and there were even times it wouldn’t get hot enough!

Other than this complaint, which I was able to manage the issue and the kitchen was definitely suitable for my needs

Living Room:

The living room was a large and you can see that there was plenty of natural light.

The couch and chair were very comfortable and I was very happy to have wood flooring instead of carpet.

There was a small TV, but I couldn’t tell you if it worked, because we didn’t turn it on once. I don’t watch a lot of TV to begin with, so it didn’t matter to me if the TV worked or not.

In this room is where the WiFi router was located. I would have to unplug the router at least once a day to “reset” it. This would solve most of my issues, but there was a slight WiFi problem in this room.

Nothing I wasn’t able to correct, or manage.

Behind the chair, there was a closet which had plenty of space and hangers for our clothes. We only packed enough clothes for about 3 to to 4 days, because we had a washing machine.

The living room had plenty of outlets, which was fantastic. We’ve been in some apartments where there are maybe 3 for the entire place. This made charging our electronic devices very easy.

Bathroom:

I love a good shower area and this apartment definitely didn’t disappoint!

The entire bathroom was the same type of tile all around. I really liked the shower layout where the floor is sloped just slightly to have the water run downward, vs a standard circle drain.

I am a fan of hot water being set to “burn my skin off” temperatures and this water actually reached a temperature that was too hot for my liking. On top of that, we never ran out of hot water.

I cherish apartments like this, because we have been in places where I would have about 23 seconds before the water went from lukewarm to ice cold.

In the bathroom is where our washing machine was located. It was tucked away perfectly out of the way. It was a bit on the smaller side, but overall the washing machine was perfect and did exactly what we needed it to do.

Bedroom:

The bedroom was a standard bedroom. It had 2 twin beds together to form one larger bed.

The bed itself was decent when it came to comfort. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either. I was able to get 6-7 hours of sleep relatively well.

I would wake up a few times, because the mattress held the heat and at times I felt like a chicken in an oven.

The natural light was great and there wasn’t much noise from the street to keep us up at night.

On the far side of the room, you can see there is another twin bed. You could easily sleep 3 people in this room.

Balcony:

Anytime I can get a balcony, I am pretty happy. I prefer a killer view, but that doesn’t always work out.

The view wasn’t spectacular, but I’ve also had far worse views! The weather while in Brno was great. We would eat breakfast everyday out on the balcony and spend our evenings out there as well.

The balcony even connected to the kitchen, so you could walk outside from the kitchen. This would make things a little easier than walking through the apartment.

Conclusion:

Overall this apartment was great. Sure it had it’s small issues, but what place doesn’t? This apartment had a great location, plenty of space, and by using my Capital One miles cost me ~$5 per night. How can you say no to that?

What ways have your Capital One miles saved you money?

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