the best free breakfast is actually a buffet, plus you order some things. tea, coffee, but you also get to order an omelette, or some special little poached egg thing, or an eggs Benedict. Usually you only get one, but if you are at a place like this chances are you are in Cancun with your friends and so your friends can order all the other options and you are trying each others.
These places also have the standard eggs, sausages, bacon, toast, croissants, orange juice, but also usually a hibiscus drink or a cool green drink.
The coffees are a full espresso situation. You can get a cappuccino, a latte, a cordano.
There is also an assortment of sweet and savory, with standard and high quality options for each. For example there may be buffet pancakes, and a french toast on the “you only get one” menu.
These are the best. You can spend an hour and a half at these breakfasts just enjoying life. Often these are served in a nice location too, outside, by the pool, by plants.
Obviously I just sound like somebody who misses hanging with my friends in Cancun.
Moving along!
Next up is the less fancy, but thorough, free hotel breakfast. You have your eggs, bacon, sausage, home fries, toast. When this is good, there is also a granola station, so that you can make your own yogurt. This is important because the hotel breakfasts that have the individually packed yogurts usually do not use very good brands, and they have too much sugar. These hotel breakfasts also have fruits, and a nice variety. If they have strawberries, this is top tier.
Everything in this tier of hotel breakfast is also available in the above, supreme breakfast.
Next!
This one would have the scrambled eggs, bacon, and usually one other thing - sausage or potatoes, but not more than four stations. There is a toaster with the cream cheese and the peanut butter, and maybe even a waffle iron. Sometimes there are hard boiled eggs as well.
Now, this free hotel breakfast is one I would still wake up early to get to. You can do a lot with this. You can put a lot of bacon on those waffles. You can make a cream cheese bagel with bacon. sometimes the bread for the toaster is good toast.
Often you can grab a bunch of bananas and apples and oranges to go if you want to, as these are the fruits that are available.
However if you are in Berlin and try to do this, you may get away with this on one day, but not on another day, and they will make you give the banana back.
I don’t know man.
Next!
Then you have the free breakfasts that might not be worth waking up for, but sometimes there is a special treat. For example there was one hotel in China Town in Queens that had little pork buns as part of their breakfast. They weren’t very good and if you are in that part of town there are a million astoundingly delicious things you could be eating, and probably shouldn’t waste a meal. However sometimes the joy of a free hotel breakfast is just seeing what is there, it really is the joy and the novelty.
Next!
Next is the above, but without anything special. No hot food, all cold food. Maybe cereal, often not milk as milk spoils. A few prepackaged things.