hotel hallways

The Claremont

2009-02-13T13:31:00.007-05:00

The Claremont continues its streak of failing to recognize me. I imagine this must sound like I'm an egomaniac, but it just mystifies me that after 5 years of regular stays (at least 10 a year, I'd guess) they'd welcome me back as a loyal customer. But no.

The Christmas decorations have been replaced by a piano that no appears to have been hired to play

Otherwise, all is as usual. (Read: a little weird).

1) Someone or thing had a battle with with my curtains.

2) There were a couple of misfitting grates placed on the bathroom window/skylights

I was curious as to why they were there (when I checked in, it was dark), but daylight revealed their true purpose: The local pigeons have selected this particular portion of the roof to be their home at the hotel.

I think the grates keep you from seeing too much pigeon effluvium on your sky light.

One other peculiarity. The Claremont Hotel's background music was lifted from a CD assembled by Stephane Pompougnac for a tres groovy hotel in Paris. The disc is called "Etage 3" Hotel Costes. It's quite nice background music. (A little out of whack with the Claremont's decor, but what the heck.) Here's the disc

(The track that was playing was "A Reminiscent Drive" by Ambrosia.)

Waterfront Hotel, Oakland

2009-01-15T10:40:00.009-05:00

The Waterfront Hotel is located at (in?) Oakland, California's Jack London Square, which may cause you to immediately think of White Fang or The Call Of The Wild, but which is actually an urban-mall-ish attempt to make the Oakland waterfront a hip 'n' trendy place to hang and shop.

Being on the waterfront, the "recently renovated" Waterfront Hotel throws down a heavy nautical theme, beginning with the front facade.

The "Ahoy, Matey" motif continues with your key card holder:

Carries into the wallpaper behind your bed,

Right through one of the lamps in the room.

All that effort, however, is interrupted by the decidedly non-nautical hallways. They're pretty much generic looking wallpaper and dark green carpeting.

The room was nice and fresh, so the "newly renovated" claim appears to hold water. The wireless internet is free, everyone was super nice, and there's a pool which, this being January and all, I didn't use. One of my cranky-by-nature co-workers was disappointed by the gym, but he's cranky about lots of things, so take that with a grain of salt water. (Hah! see how I managed to get in a nautical joke there?)

Here's another plus. The Waterfront Hotel is two blocks away from Yoshi's Jazz Club, one of America's premier jazz venues. In fact, I was lucky enough to run into one of the world's greatest jazz guitarists, John Abercrombie, who was staying at the hotel.

(I stole that image from John's website, but since it's an ad for him, I assume he won't get mad and send his lawyers after me.)

So, if you're a jazz fan, you might run into one of your heroes here. (I did). If you're a fan of mini-bars, you're out of luck, as I couldn't find one anywhere in my room. There was coffee, though, so I was happy.

Golden Hallway Winner for 2008

2009-01-08T09:48:00.003-05:00

I'm not quite as excited about my Golden Hallway Award winner this year. (Last year's winner, the Hotel Gault in Montreal really knocked my socks off). This year, I had a little more trouble deciding on the champ. I wanted to give it to the Claremont for consistently not recognizing me as a repeat customer. (After all, I've been staying there pretty regularly for 4 years). I thought I'd give the Ashton Inn an award for its unspeakably filthy stair carpeting, but thought that might take the luster off this prestigious award.

Ultimately, I give this year's award to the

Hotel Monaco

in Washington, DC. It's a very nice hotel, with the added bonus of leopard-print loungewear available for purchase, and free internet. So three cheers for the Monaco.

Blancaneaux Lodge

2009-01-08T09:04:00.010-05:00

This is yet another hotel with no hallways, so technically, it really doesn't qualify for inclusion in this blog, but too bad.

The Blancaneaux Lodge (owned & operated by Francis Ford Coppola) is located near San Ignacio, Belize. (About a 3 hour drive from Belize City). In its favor: A gorgeous setting.

It has beautiful villa/cabanas deposited picturesquely around the grounds.

They have real, honest, thatched roofs.

There's a hot tub. (And an unheated pool)

In short, Blancaneaux Lodge would seem to be a perfect place to relax.

I was all set to give it the 2008 Golden Hallway award.

The people who work at Blancaneaux Lodge are uniformly pleasant, helpful, friendly, outgoing, and eager to please. As you can plainly see, it's beautiful.

And yet: (Everyone was so nice, I feel bad having to relay this information)

There are a couple of problems. It is very isolated. (Which is good, if that's what you're looking for). But that means everything you eat comes from the Blancaneaux kitchens, which were, to be honest, disappointing. It is claimed that Mrs. Coppola oversees every detail about the Lodge, so the fact that her "lemon chicken" has no lemon in it must be somewhat of a surprise to her.

And then there were the cimex lectularius. I know it's a tropical environment and all, but geez, Mr. Coppola, I didn't expect to end my vacation splattered with bed bug bites. (I had 18 on my right arm alone).

So, no Golden Hallway award for Blancaneaux. Though it is the first hotel I've ever stayed in with bedbugs, so it's got that award going for it.

The Marriott Hotel at George Bush Intercontinental Airport

2009-01-07T15:58:00.010-05:00

The family had a lovely vacation plan that was thrown into temporary disarray due to our inability to connect to the flight we needed to be on to get to our destination. Net result, we had to spend an unplanned night in Houston. More precisely, at the Houston Airport.

The Marriott at IAH (George Bush Intercontinental Airport) was clearly designed during that phase of American life when space-age design ruled. It is a hub, spoke, and ring design. The hub houses the elevators and a rotating top floor restaurant. The spokes are the walkways to the rings, which house the rooms. The design inspiration is pretty obvious to me:

Unfortunately, two of the four spokes on our floor were blocked for maintenance, and so we were required to navigate 270 degrees of the ring to get to our room. It was actually kind of dizzying.

The hotel tried to make the trek more manageable by breaking up the circle with a pattern woven into the carpet that looked (as my wife put it) like throw rugs.

Eating choices at the hotel were slim. By the time we checked in, the only open restaurant was a way way overpriced rotating fancy place on the top floor, giving you a full and unobstructed view of the airport. No choices for restaurants at the airport, either. IAH has plenty of places to nosh, but only after you've passed through TAS security, which we couldn't do, because we didn't get boarding passes for the flight the next day. We ultimately spent $30 on cab fare to go to a Chilis.

One other thing. To get to our floor, we had to insert our key card. No matter how fast you stuck the card in the slot you heard a female voice repeatedly say:

"Please insert your key card to access levels one, two or three".

My son delighted in forcing the voice to say that phrase over and over and over again.

The Marriott at IAH skimps big time on the coffee, too. Basically one cup of regular, one cup of decaf. The end. There is a train stop in the basement that'll take you to the terminal of your choice. I think everyone who chooses the hotel is either stranded or works for an airline.

Golden Hallway Award

2008-12-23T16:30:00.004-05:00

The coveted Golden Hallway Award has not been given out yet, because I'm going to be staying in one more hotel before the end of the year. The current leaders in the clubhouse are: Old Skool: The Grand Hotel Tremezzo, and Moderne: The Hotel Monaco, Washington, DC. The Ashton Inn and Suites in Pensacola is not a contender.

The Claremont, Berkeley, California

2008-12-23T16:10:00.006-05:00

The Claremont continues to astonish. As steady readers of the blog know, I've stayed at the Claremont many times. Yet they continue to confuse me with someone who's never stayed there before. Ah well.

I don't think I've ever shown off one of the most peculiar hallways in hoteldom, the 4th floor of the Claremont. Here it is. One side for basketball players, the other for their small children.

Voila:

Next, a room with a view. (Well, half of one, anyway. Part of my window was blocked by a dormer.)

The hotel did have a nice Christmas display - a giant gingerbread house. In typical California style, there was a little sign that warned guests that the house had been treated with chemicals to preserve it. (In case you were thinking of gnawing on a chunk.)

Here's the strangest thing. My room had an ethernet cable. (A good thing) It also had a three-prong outlet I could use for my computer power adapter. (Also a good thing) However, they weren't in the same room. Hence, the only way I could simultaneously power my computer and go online was to lie on the floor. See?

Ashton Inn and Suites, Pensacola, Florida

2008-08-01T20:43:00.019-04:00

The last hotel I stayed in (see below - the Hotel Monaco in DC) is the current front runner for Golden Hallway 2008. Ashton Inn and Suites is (are?) the leading candidate for the Lead Hallway of 08

When I checked in, I asked the (actually very nice woman) at the front desk if the hotel had wireless. "No," she replied, "but there's internet in the room." That was true, to a certain extent. There was an ethernet jack, but no cable. No cables at the front desk, either. (I asked). So if you do plan on staying at Ashton Inn and Suites, bring your own cable.

Connectivity issues aside, I would advise against selecting Ashton Inn and Suites. (This is really awkward. I keep wanting to write The Ashton Inn, but the official name is Ashton Inn and Suites, so I'm screwed.)

Ashton Inn and Suites has unbelievably filthy carpets. Maybe it's a form of industrial sabotage by the cleaning staff. It's like they decided the grim green walls weren't depressing enough, and felt compelled to underscore the general squalor of the place.

One of my colleagues refused to walk around in his room in his bare feet. The bedspread was made of some 'miracle' fabric that looked oily, and the "pillows" looked like pannini versions of the ones you normally expect in a hotel.

Here are some photos of the stains.

The 'clean, parts of the carpet on the stairs in the photo above are the stair risers. The filthy parts are the treads. Blech. The tile floor on the ground floor was 'nicer'.

To give you an idea of the Kwality of the place, the key cards are sponsored by Domino's.

The "kitchenette" area of my room had some utensils and kitchenware, but there was also a prominent sign alerting guests that while they had been cleaned in a dishwasher, they did not pass state or local sanitizing standards. Yum!

I also liked the in-room coffee. It's a brand I've never heard of. (Perhaps one of those regional specialty things foodies are always salivating over.) Plus, it's got the best slogan ever. I present: Leroy Hill Coffee. "It'll Get Cha (sic) Goin!"

One other thing. Ashton Inns are now available for weekly rentals. Just in case you've been very, very bad.

Hotel Monaco, Washington, DC

2008-07-20T17:50:00.012-04:00

The short version of the post is this: The Hotel Monaco, DC, is in the lead for this year's prestigious Golden Hallway Award.

This is a very groovy hotel. The hallways are nearly hallucination-generating in their stripey efflorescence. (The photo doesn't do the effect justice, I'm afraid to say).

Adding to the optical glory, along the way to your room, you'll pass some ersatz Ellsworth Kelly paintings. (Though if I remember correctly, he tended to favor brighter colors).

My room suffered from a few, uh, irregularities. Once again, I find that rational hotel floor numbering is disappearing art. I was on floor one, which isn't really the ground floor. It's below street level. How did I know? My room's windows were usable as viewing devices only by NBA starting centers.

(That last photo is taken at standing height, with the camera pointed straight up toward the ceiling). The light, such as it is, which through yonder windows break, is at sidewalk level.

The Monaco DC is a Kimpton hotel (like the 72 Park Avenue I stayed in last year) and as such, offers the guest the opportunity to purchase lounge wear to maximize the pleasure of his or her sojourn.

I wasn't interested in the top, and the bottoms were size XXL. The thought of me sashaying around my room, alone, in a giant pair of artificial-fiber leopard-print boxers makes even me feel a little woozy, so I put them both back into the closet, along with the giraffe-print bathrobe, which I think was woven of lead, as it weighed 80 or 90 pounds.

The Monaco has a couple of peculiarities, none of which detracted from my stay.

One, there is no room 114. (Maybe it's like platform 12 3/4 in the Harry Potter books). I couldn't take a picture of it, for what I hope to be obvious reasons.

Across the hall from the missing room is pecularity number two, a non-enterable or leaveable door. See?

Ah well, minor points. The hotel has a great location (across the street from the National Portrait Gallery), convivial hosts, nice toiletries, and a dang good restaurant with at least one very charming waitress. (The one who waited on my colleague and me.)

Best of all, for professional pickers-of-nits like me, the hotel actually has (hold your breath here) FREE internet access in your room, and free wireless in the lobby.

Go. Stay.

Courtyard Los Angeles Century City/Beverly Hills

2008-06-29T21:17:00.010-04:00

For a hotel cheek by jowl with Botox usage world headquarters, the CLACC/BH is very unpretentious. It's laid out a bit oddly, although that could be my misperception because I arrived at 2:30 am my time, after having flown in from Washington, DC following a meeting earlier that day.

The people at the front desk couldn't have been nicer. They practically threw themselves at my feet in shame when they had to tell me that instead of a king-sized bed, I would have to settle for doubles. As I'm far from king-sized, and traveling alone, I didn't really care.

After staggering down a couple (?) three (?) four (?) hallways I found a couple of complimentary cookies and a pint of milk on ice awaiting me in my room. Awwww. isn't that nice? My room had a pair of faux windows. Here's one. It was over my bed.

I thought the light-proof curtains might just be decorative - but they opened onto a communal patio. Not the quietest, as it is right on top of Olympic avenue. On the plus side, the noise proof sliding door was, indeed, noise proof.

After a sum total of seven hours, I left my room,

Turned left,

Turned left again,

Turned right,

Passed some art work that reminded me I was in California,

Walked down a flight of stairs by a wall of windows,

and left for a meeting. Frankly, I was so discombobulated by travel that this whole stay could've been an hallucination.

Very romantic and luxe and jet-setty, no?

Please note. Free internet. Had to plug in an ethernet cord, but so what.

Hilton Alexandria Mark Center

2008-06-29T20:27:00.021-04:00

I think I wandered, unknowingly, into Bizarro World when I got to the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center.

For starters, it's not in Alexandria, per se. It's in the Mark Center. The Mark Center is a development with office buildings and this hotel distributed around a park like area. It's quite nice, as long as you don't feel like walking somewhere. There are no sidewalks, nor are there any nearby retail establishments.

The entrance and the place you park are separated by the hotel itself. You have to drive all the way around and enter in the back.

Check in was interminable. There were two people working the front desk, but in addition to checking you in - which required that the check-in person manually enter your driver's license number (?) into their computer - they had to answer the phones, too. It took a long time.

I was assigned an "accessible" room on the 6th floor. (That's what the checking in people called it).

I have now officially given up trying to figure out hotel floor numbering systems. (See National Conference Center, below). The sixth floor, where my room was located, is actually only one flight above the lobby.

The hallway makes you feel very presidential - which makes sense, given the proximity of the hotel to the Whi...well, nothing really.

I don't know why they messed up the nice little table arrangement by the elevators with a cheap chair, but so be it.

The room itself was directly across from the elevators. Which would've been fine, except for the 10 or 20 thousand teen-aged girls who checked in around 10:30 and decided to use the elevator area as a communal "Oh my god ... did you see Emily with Biff" gossip central, since they couldn't possibly fit into each others' rooms.

Back to my room. For "Accessible", read: for people in wheelchairs. You know this because the shower area and the bathroom area are unseparated by a lip, step, or moat.

That's fine with me. What wasn't, though, was the mold everywhere.

On the wall

On the floor

On the wall again

Under the fold-down seat.

The hotel restaurant is quite good. Make that very good. I had dinner there, as well as breakfast the next morning, where I found these hieroglyphics on the back of my menu.

Oddest of all was the shirt a Japanese fellow was wearing. I should mention that the hotel is heavily populated by tourists and the military. While most of his shirt was standard Engrish it featured a very unfortunate turn of phrase, namely, over his left breast was written: "All Japanese 7 December".

Hmm. I think the guy wearing it had no idea that he was advertising Pearl Harbor Day in a completely inappropriate manner. I hope he wasn't one of those ultra-nationalist Japanese types who wanted to poke his finger in our barbarian American eyes.

And, of course, the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center charges for internet.

The National Conference Center at Lansdowne.

2008-06-23T15:25:00.012-04:00

This is one weird hotel. For starters, you enter on what you think is the ground floor (it being on the same level as the parking lot and driveway) but soon discover is called the third floor by the owner/operator of this place.

Once you check in, you're handed a gaily colored map and, with various verbal and written directions, are pointed in the vicinity of your room. Map in hand, you discover that the conference center is a linked series of buildings.

Linked, I should point out, by underground hallways. In the vernacular: tunnels. Long tunnels.

After I passed these hallways (tunnels), and skirted the dining area (about which more later), I had to go down a more regular hallway,

Past this attractive seating area,

Past a bench with a hole inexplicably drilled in it,

Down another short hallway, and you've reached the door to my room. (And the penultimate hallway)

For before I could throw myself, exhausted, onto my bed, I had to go down yet another hall and make a left turn.

The air conditioning was broken in my room, but was fixed by a couple of cheerful maintenance guys within three or four hours.

The National Conference Center is like a beached cruise ship. Once you're aboard, you're aboard. All meals are included - all you can eat buffet-style food.

The overall design is very strange. One of my co-trapees said that the National Conference Center felt like minimum-security, white collar Federal Penitentiary. (Not that he'd been in one) Another said his room reminded him of a Navy berth, only without the rocking motion.

It was all so peculiar that I was only half-surprised to find out that no one claimed ownership of the place. Usually, a hotel is owned, proudly, by some other brand name. Not the National Conference Center. It was mysterious enough to lead me to believe the NCC was a US Government property. After all, they did have the audacity to claim National status.

But no. Once I got back to the office, I Googled(r) the place, only to find it's owned by Aramark - which explains the cafeteria style eating, I guess. But not the tunnels. Sorry, underground hallways.

By the way, if you do stay there, do not, under any circumstances, forget something in your room. Getting from anywhere else (like the front desk, or one of the meeting rooms) back to your room and back to your destination will take most of the morning. Or afternoon.

Springhill Suites Memphis East/Galleria

2008-06-17T21:22:00.012-04:00

Springhill Suites Memphis East/Galleria sets you up with a near-impossible-to-meet set of expectations. I quote from the official web copy: "Turn your next trip into an inspired and rewarding experience. Spacious suites to work, sleep or play. Irresistible beds with fresh, crisp, white linens. Stylish décor. Free in-room high speed internet access." Wow. That's a big promise for a bed/living area, isn't it?

The hallway gives little indication of the pleasures which are, no doubt, just ahead.

I'll give the Springhill Suites Memphis East/Galleria this much: It's clean and roomy. And the internet is free. I do have an issue with their definition of "stylish décor". To me, the room looked more as if the person in charge of outfitting the rooms opened a furniture catalog and started picking things out at random, to wit:

The lamps. No matter which style of lamp you like, you're sure to find one in your room.

Or the mirrors. Round with silver frame or Square with faux window frame? Just spin around in your desk chair, and face your favorite.

Upholstery? Who cares if nothing matches? Variety is the spice of life, isn't it?

If only that devil-may-care interior design philosophy carried over to the toiletries. To wash my hair, I had my choice of conditioner or conditioner.

One other thing. I think the interior designer ran out of steam when it came time to furnish the bathroom. Instead of placing the toilet paper near the toilet, they chose to put it just out of reach across the room from your seated position.

In case you were wondering, there was room next to the toilet. But that wouldn't make for a rewarding or inspiring experience, now would it?

The Norfolk Airport Hilton

2008-06-17T10:17:00.011-04:00

The Norfolk "Airport" Hilton is not actually at the airport, it's close to the airport. There is no Hilton in Norfolk that is closer to the airport in Norfolk, so I guess it merits its name. The halls are nothing to write home about, but that doesn't mean I can't write about them here. See?

The hotel is popular, based on my completely unscientific "how many USA Todays are there by the doors in the morning" method.

The NAH has a number of, shall we say, interesting features. 1) Two atria (atriums?).
The first is over the lobby.

The second illuminates this Max & Erma's table behind the elevator shaft.

2) A welcoming curtain on your floor, instead of some indication of where your room might be.

The curtain is always closed. Good thing, too, as it hides a spotlight module and some other junk.

One other thing. They must take brass polishing very seriously, as they've managed to scrub off the plating on the elevator door.

Sheraton Annapolis II

2008-05-11T12:42:00.016-04:00

I had a return visit to the Sheraton Annapolis. When I checked in, the people welcoming me were very kind & solicitous. I actually felt a little guilty about dissing the place during an earlier stay.

Part of my unusually forgiving frame of mind was that I'd just finished reading a really wonderful travel book, Shadow of the Silk Road, by the eminent British travel writer, Colin Thubron. Like all the books I've read of his, they're perspicacious, illuminating and instructive, as well as being beautifully written. En route from Xian, in western China, through Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Northern Iran, and Turkey to the Mediterranean, Mr. Thubron had to lodge in some dodgy places - without running water, with clogged lavatories, etc. etc. So how could I have complained about the Sheraton Annapolis' missing soda machines, dirt on the floor and creepy Nutcracker statues? (See earlier post, here.)

The lobby looked nice.

And the halls still featured my beloved enormous hound's tooth pattern.

So far, it seemed as if my cranky review from before may have been inaccurate.

With this unusually cheerful and open frame of mind, I entered my room. The first thing I noticed was that the sink stopper was broken.

The paint by the door handle was missing in places.

The ceiling sprinkler flange was misplaced somewhere.

Kind of picayune whining, I know. But then I saw that the floor molding by the closet had been wrenched off.

And for the piece de resistance, someone or thing (termites? beavers?) had removed a large chunk from the dresser drawer. How could no one have noticed this? I actually took two photos, to show off the missing piece to full advantage.

That was one of the weirdest hotel items I've observed yet.

Aside from my room being tormented by the unceasing sound of the elevator motors, two more peculiarities struck me before I returned home.

One was the odd letter spacing in one of the two elevators, which, in part, reminds me of Chico Marx's "Italian" accent. (I'm sure you'll spot the words to which I'm referring; notto and subjectto).

The final incongruity appears not at the Sheraton, but at BWI, immediately following the TSA examination area in Concourse C.

What appears to be a typical airport seating bench,

Turns out to be (and I'll admit, I've never seen one before) a TSA (read: official) "recomposure" area.

Interestingly, if you google(r) the definition of recomposure, you receive the following query:

"Did you mean: define decompose"?

No, I didn't actually. I had a plane to catch, after all.

The Doubletree, Virginia Beach

2008-05-05T15:55:00.020-04:00

I usually go on short business trips (only an overnight stay), so I was looking forward to three nights in a hotel, even if this third night was really only a half-night, since I had to get up at 4:00 am to make my flight home. I was so excited to be able to use the clothing storage facilities, instead of leaving things in my suitcase as I usually do.

The Doubletree has seen better days. The hallway was kind of dim. Not in a romantic, trysting, The Royalton way, but more in a "the carpets used to look better" way.

Here's the hall:

Here are the reasons I think they keep the lights dim. The carpet in the elevator looked a little dodgy. You may be able to see the clean/dirty area in this photo. (Notice the corner)

If you can't see the difference, you'll probably spot the red stain in this photo.

I was worried that the stain was from a guest bleeding out on the way to the lobby. The elevator floor numbering lights weren't functioning. You wouldn't know it from this picture, but I was somewhere between 7 and L when I snapped this. (The dark bar should have some red lights in it.)

Once I got to my room, I noticed the clothes-hanging rod was, well, to be charitable, a little "loose" on one end. That's my diplomatic way of saying it was down considerably at the stern, which caused my clothes hangers to slide down and herd together at one end. I didn't get a photo of the rod, unfortunately, but noticed a similarly not-leveled feature of the room: The tissue box:

I'm no fire-fighting expert, but it seems to me that this hose connection is probably supposed to have a hose on it.

At least the door to the non-hose equipped hose connection was easy to open.

As was one of the two elevator phone doors.

The calling device behind the easy-to-open door was white:

I don't know the color of the other phone, because the door was clearly only accessible to professional elevator phone callers.

Here's one incredibly not nice feature of the hotel. The Doubletree Virginia Beach charges $9.95 for wired internet access in your room. That's pretty standard. What isn't, is that your payment expires at 4:00 pm. That means if you need to sign up for internet access, and it's 3:58 pm, you get 2 minutes of internet for $9.95. If you sign up at 4:01 pm, you get 23 hours and 59 minutes for $9.95. I have went to college, and this seems awfully peculiar to me.

A little card in the room lists all the Hilton Hotel variants (the Doubletree being one of them), and refers to them as "The Hilton Family of Hotels". Oh, come on. Do the powers-that-be at Hilton honestly think anyone believes the executives of these variants are a happy family that spends Thanksgiving and Christmas together, looking at old photos and remembering old times? Come to think of it, any company that believes the internet pricing schedule mentioned above is logical, smart, or likely to create happy customers probably thinks we'd believe they're a happy family, too.

A thoroughly blah hotel. Oh, the people were nice - especially the guys at the front desk at 4:15 am, but I can't really recommend staying there for that reason. If towels are a reason for you to select a hotel, you should consider it. It has nice, fluffy towels. In fact, they're much nicer and thicker than the ones at the Hyatt San Francisco.

Hyatt Regency San Francisco

2008-04-23T21:37:00.016-04:00

From the gilded age splendor of the Grand Hotel Tremezzo we now travel to the Gigantor-age style of the Hyatt San Francisco Embarcadero Center.

The Hyatt's sleek, one-sided hallways run rings around the vaguely trapezoidal form of the biggest dang "lobby" you're likely to see in your lifetime.

You immediately feel like an ant. Or an electron circling the giant sculpted ball that fills 1/1000th of the interior space.

That's not all bad, of course. If I were the owner, I'd feel like some 80's master of the universe. But as I'm not, I focused on some smaller items of interest.

1) The feeling-a-little-dated tile floors in the elevators - which from the outside look a lot like they belong to the interior of the Tyrell building in Blade Runner.

2) The not matching the floors of the elevators elevator landing carpet.

3) The button which in most hotels would waft you to the penthouse, but which here promises only a trip to the EQ.

4) The abandoned chat area on the fourth floor. All that was left of what must've been conceived as a little nook for intimate tetes-a-tete was an end table with a phone on it. (Sorry, didn't get a good photo of it.)

5) The sign for the exercise room, which I mistakenly took for a Swastika pointing to a meeting room for the American Nazi Party.

It's a nice hotel. At least my room was nice. A colleague with whom I was traveling claimed her bathtub was ringed with "black mold".

Mine had an exceedingly slow to flush toilet. I don't know if this was an issue with the pipes, or if my unit was an early, inefficient version of a low water usage commode. Either way, one had to be careful or the chamber maid would have an unfortunate surprise.

The Hyatt, being a luxury hotel, charges for wireless internet. (The inverse relationship between room price and internet charge continues!) What made this even more annoying than usual was the glacial pace of the connection. You could enter a url, try to fix the toilet, come back, and it would still be loading. What's worse, when I checked out, I mentioned to the nice lady that the internet was very very slow, and she said, with complete aplomb, "we know, we're trying to fix it". Gee, thanks. How about a warning card in your room before you cough up the dough to "log on"? Something like "Go ahead and pay, sucker, but don't expect anything faster than a 28k dial up modem".

One other thing. The chrome was coming off the drain stopper in the sink. I know the old saying, "the bloom is off the rose". I have a modern replacement: The chrome's off the brass. Doesn't have the same ring, does it?

Grand Hotel Tremezzo

2008-04-19T04:02:00.014-04:00

The Grand Hotel Tremezzo would be worth staying in if only for its location on Lake Como. But since this blog isn't about geography, per se, I'm going to stick to covering what the blog name promises. Halls.

Now this is a hallway:

Ground floor:

Our floor:

I don't think you'd find a carpet like this in a Courtyard by Marriott.

Lovely, n'est-ce pas? The Grand Tremezzo is indeed a grand hotel in the old European tradition. The ceilings are as tall as an airport hanger, and the floors would probably cost more to install today than an entire modular "business center" that seems to be too many modern hotels' main attraction.

Here's the tromp d'oeil section.

This is just the plain part.

As befitting its grandness and tradition, it has a number of intriguing features (probably due to its having been erected in 1910).

1) The mystery switch in the bathroom (I don't know what happens when you pull it - maybe it signals your servants to come to your assistance).

2) These faucets weren't connected to anything specific, as far as I could tell.

It's really a wonderful hotel, in the "grand" European tradition. And a spectacular "breakfast buffet". I don't know what else to call it, but under no circumstances should you think of waffles or cereal. It's more like breakfast heaven.

As is the hotel. Go. Vai! Vai! Book a room now!

Four Points by Sheraton Miami Beach

2008-04-03T13:54:00.006-04:00

I had a couple nights' stay at the Four Points Miami Beach. It's about 2 miles north of the happening part of town where the Delano is.

The hotel is part of a historical preservation area called MiMo - for Miami Modern. That means whatever renovations the hotel performs must fit with the era. I think this explains why the elevator service was so wanky - there are two elevators plus a service elevator. They're all tiny, and half the non-service elevators weren't functioning, which made the wait excruciatingly long. You could see the broken elevator sulking one floor below the lobby if you looked closely at the elevator doors. And I think they can't build bigger elevators for fear of incurring the wrath of the local do-gooders. As long as you're comfortable smelling burned tourists, you'll be fine.

Anyway, they've attempted to rejuvenate the hotel along its original lines. (By the way, I don't think the lobby conforms to MiMo aesthetics). The halls are pretty ordinary, though they've painted them a kind of frisky green color.

There's a design era tug-of-war with the hall lighting. In this corner, representing the fifties and sixties, this bubble ceiling fixture.

And in the other, the defending champ from some unspecified point in time: the wall fixture.

Since the two style don't seem to agree, I'm not sure which direction the hotel plans to have be its ultimate design statement.

The hallways will not prepare you for the room, which was nice and clean. AND BLUE. One of the walls was like the little photos that accompany dictionary entries - you know, like the one for "snood". It defined blue. (The photo doesn't do it justice, I'm sad to say.)

I must say, this is the first room I've had with a view of a ship container parking lot.

The Four Points has some kind of advertising tie in with Charmin Bathroom tissue. One element is a vinyl sticker near the sink -

The other is a sticker on the toilet paper roll itself.

Maybe the next big ad idea will be to have Lysol sponsor the toilet seat itself.

I do have a question for Mr. & Mrs. Four Points by Sheraton. If your name is Four Points, why does the inlaid compass rose in the lobby have 8 points? Just asking.

Also, how can the 4th floor of the hotel be one floor above the lobby, which is at street level?

Hilton Anaheim

2008-03-06T19:49:00.017-05:00

I don't get Hilton Hotels. I can't characterize them in any meaningful way. Nice? Luxurious? Modern? Old fashioned? Good value? Nicer than a Marriott? Not as nice as a Marriott? They're all over the place. Hilton's new slogan doesn't help much. Here it is:

Nothing like a vapid phrase to help focus that brand, Mr. Hilton. "Travel should take you places" is as meaningless as "walking should take you forward or backward", or "a shower should make you wet". Or "furnaces should heat your house". Or "rakes should gather leaves". Maybe I should start my own ad agency.

To give you an idea how flimsy the Hilton brand is, the sign outside the hotel had two logos of equal size. One, of course, was Hilton. The other, Starbucks. I guess that's a pretty good way to tell how weak the Hilton brand is, and how powerful the Starbucks brand continues to be.

The Hilton Anaheim is big. Big big. That makes sense, because it's right next to Disneyland. (The original, not that parvenu Disney "world" in Florida.) The parking structure is monstrous, and almost impossible to navigate. I tried following the arrows pointing to the elevators, but wound up going the wrong way and nearly t-boning an elderly driver. Once I found a space, the path to the elevators themselves was blocked by a neatly stacked block of about 3,000 chairs. Once you get to the lobby, stand back and look at 70's architecture in all its glory.

The halls are big, too. Or, rather, long. No surprise here.

But in the spirit of the maze-like parking lot, the signage to your room is quite perplexing. What the heck happened to room 5.528? Is it haunted?

You'll have plenty of time to admire the flowing movement of the hallway carpet. At least it's a new twist on the puke resisitant patterns to which I've grown so accustomed.

I was assigned a newly-redecorated room. Hilton paid an advertising agency to come up with a snazzy way of saying this, and they responded with this little embarrassment. "New'd". That way, they could put a sign up in the elevators telling you that you can "sleep in the New'd". HAHAHAHA. What a bunch of cards!

The room carpet seemed kind of old-skool to me. I haven't seen sculpted gray/green carpet in a long time. Truth be told, I hadn't missed it.

I also didn't miss the mis-applied wallpaper, though I did neglect to take a good photo of it. The faulty part is over by the thermostat.

All typical, I guess, of modern-giant-chain-hotel-by-a-big-tourist-attraction-lodging.

The water, however, was not. I made a cup of coffee in the morning, and noticed it tasted kind of funky. So I filled the glass in the bathroom, and was horrified to see that it looked like milk.

Now you might say "hang on, Misterarthur, that's because of an aerator in the faucet." Sorry, sharp-eyed reader, it's not. I know this because there was no aerator on the faucet, because the water ran clear if you let it run long enough, and because no one at the meeting I was attending could drink the ice water they served at lunch.

Oh, and they charged for internet access, too.

The Claremont

2008-01-30T15:59:00.000-05:00

Oh, Claremont, why hast thou forsaken me? I was at the Claremont, again. I was hoping I'd get the promised 11th-stay upgrade, even though (of course), I'd lost my golden ticket. (See below). I arrived at the hotel very very late (3:30 AM my time), and was again greeted like the stranger I am not. My room did seem a little bigger than usual. The message light was blinking on my phone when I arrived in the room. It turned out there wasn't a voice message, but there was a note for me at the front desk. How exciting! I thought it would be a congratulatory message about my upgrade. Alas, it wasn't so. The next morning, when I retrieved the message (oddly, they couldn't turn off the blinking message light until they had printed it out), it turned out to be nothing but a hotel-wide notice that the hotel was now providing shuttle service to downtown Oakland. What a heart breaker.

Norfolk Marriott Waterside

2008-01-30T15:33:00.000-05:00

I had a short, but nice, stay at the Marriot in Norfolk. This Marriott has very upscale ambitions - perhaps it was going to be a Ritz Carlton (owned by Marriott, you know) but plans were scaled back at the last moment. Here's why I think so. Beyond the grand (and freezing) lobby, the carpet pattern in the elevator landings says Ritz-Carlton Marina Del Rey to me. (See much earlier posts). Check out the giant graphic!

The rooms are very nice, but they played it dim on the hallway lighting.

Maybe they were hoping that you wouldn't notice the peeling wallpaper:

There was a palimpsest of elevator landing devices of yore, too. I can't guess what it could've been. (And, yes, I do know that it's not really a palimpsest. But it is an impressive looking word, so I used it anyway. So there)

And they couldn't have spent more than a minute or two coming up with the imaginatively-named dining room:

I had one very odd thing happen to me. I got in the elevator to go downstairs, the door shut, and the elevator started to descend. It changed its mind after it had gone about 4 inches and slammed to a halt, after which the doors opened. I got off quickly. Later, when I made it downstairs in a different elevator car, I mentioned it to the (very nice) front-desk-person. Walking away, I heard her on the phone saying something like "...the elevator's acting up again..". Yippee

The Atlanta Marriott Alpharetta

2008-01-09T20:00:00.000-05:00

2008 begins with a chain. And a hotel that pretends to be in two places at once. It seems a little unfair to the weary traveler to cause him to question his place in the universe, but I'm here to tell you that the Atlanta Marriott Alpharetta is indeed in Alpharetta, and not in Atlanta, where there's another Marriott, called the Marriott Marquis. Got that? The Atlanta Marriott Alpharetta is pretty new, as is the exurb of Alpharetta itself. It has a sort of grandiose entrance hall. When we arrived, the OSU smackdown by LSU was in full play, with the SEC being loudly supported in the bar.
The hall was like most halls in chain hotels:

that is to say, striped wallpaper and wall to wall carpet with a stain-hiding design down the middle. (In this case, sort of tangerine-ish). My room actually had a hall-ish feature, too. Here's the view from the 'bedroom' to the door:

There wasn't much, honestly, to distinguish the Alpharetta version of the Atlanta Marriott from most other Marriotts, though there was one irritant and two things that struck me as a little out-of-the ordinary.

The irritant: A sink that took forever to drain.

Then, this is the first hotel I've stayed in for ages that has its own laundry area:

I can see this in an extended-stay sort of place, but it seemed rather out of place here. (This was a chi chi Marriott, after all).

Finally, there was the permanent glass of beer by the elevators. The first photo was snapped when I checked in (around 9:30 pm), and the second when I left, at 8:30 am.

I do have a question for Mr. Marriott. There's a pecking order for Marriott hotels, and Courtyard by Marriott is lower caste than a "Marriott". So why why why is internet free at the Courtyard, and not free at the more expensive Marriott? Isn't the general rule that paying more actually gets you more? Maybe it's a Mormon thing.

The Sheraton Annapolis Hotel

2007-12-17T20:47:00.000-05:00

And so 2007 comes to a close, not with a bang but with a whimper. (I don't believe T.S. Eliot could've imagined a line of his poetry winding up in a blog about hotel hallways, do you?) The Sheraton Annapolis is a completely generic hotel, in a generic outskirt, next to a generic mall, with generic chain restaurants. That can be good, I know, (the best surprise is no surprise, blah blah blah) but it some way it's kind of depressing. No charm, no wit, no individuality. I actually prefer a little weirdness, like the Claremont's landing strip-width halls, or the 70 Park Avenue's out-of-nowhere stairs. This is pure blah...except for the following: One: The Hound's Tooth of the Baskervilles-sized carpet "design".

Don't believe me? Check out the close-up view.

That's not hound's tooth. It's hound's fang.

Two: The odd dust heap on the floor of the elevator...which wouldn't have been worth noting, except for its repeat performance on the landing of the second floor:

Three: The oxymoronic sign on the fire exit door.

Four: Some life-sized Nutcracker guys enlivening the lobby. They were pretty creepy, actually. Here's a legit question: Does anyone really like the Nutcracker? Or is just something you're supposed to like? Do you go see it because it's the thing you have to take your kids to see, or they'll be uncultured? My own belief is that it's very difficult to get into the Christmas spirit when confronted by a set of malformed choppers like these.

Five: False promises. The sign in the hall promises Vending and Ice, so I got all excited.

Closer inspection revealed, however, the reality was actually Plumbing and Ice.

Oh, by the way, just so you know that you're near the Chesapeake Bay, instead of say, Omaha, there are nautical photos in the rooms and the hotel's restaurant is called the Annapolis Grill.

The Annual Golden Hallway Award

2007-12-06T15:01:00.000-05:00

As prestigious an award as exists in the hospitality industry, I'm pleased to announce the winner of the 2007 Golden Hallway Award.

Hotel Gault, Montreal, QC

2007-12-04T19:54:00.000-05:00

Drum roll, please. The winner of the first Hotel Hallways Golden Hallway Award is the Hotel Gault in Montreal, Canada. Thank God I stayed here before the end of the year, or the award would probably have gone unawarded. Here's why it won. Exhibit A, the lovely, naturally-lit fifth floor hall. Simultaneously modern, yet warm.

Exhibit B. The thankfully non-vomit-stain pattern carpet. It's really refreshing to find a hotel that believes its guests will behave like adults and not park the tiger outside their rooms. (See virtually every post below if you don't know what I mean). Look! Unbelievable!

The Hotel Gault's goodness doesn't end with the Hotel Hallways award-winning hallway. The lobby is super cool, too.

Even the front door is tasty

My room's terrace would've been nice, but Montreal Weather didn't cooperate, dumping 30 cm (measure like the Canadians do!) of snow overnight.

A special shout out to the staff, too, who were uniformly pleasant, helpful, and charming.

All the extra groovy people love it, including the paparazzi-shy blogger extraordinaire, the fabulous style guru Jennifer "Design Hole" Mitchell.

The Claremont, Berkeley, California

2007-11-12T10:52:00.000-05:00

I'm back at the Claremont again. This is the tenth time I've stayed at the Claremont since the beginning of 2007. They've finally awoken to that fact. The last time I was here, I checked in with a colleague who had stayed here once. She got a room upgrade. I was behind her in the check in line. I asked, "Do I get upgraded, too?", thinking, but of course, you're an honored frequent Claremont guest. But no, I wasn't. I had a room in the back overlooking the kitchen dumpsters. More about the Claremont's uh, peculiar frequent guest program anon.

This time, I had a nicer room near the very top of the building. Here's the view at 5:45 this morning.

The hall on the fifth floor isn't nearly as "impressive" in its scope as those on the lower floors. It's much more manageable than the aircraft carrier sized ones lower down that you can view on one of my earlier posts. See?

What you can't see in the photo is that everyone got a USA Today except me. Maybe the management detests that newspaper, and feels like it's performing a service to its frequent guests by not giving them a free copy of it. They did remember to slide the bill under the door, so they do know I'm in the room.

Berkeley is known for its free spirits, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the fire exit sign on my door. On the left of the photo, you'll see the standard "you are here, exit is here, stairs are here, don't take the elevator" stuff. On the right, the Berkeley edition, which is pretty much a "plan your own exit" strategy. That is, you get to decide where you think the fire extinguisher, escape route, and your own room are located. Look! My room's in the staircase, the fire extinguisher in in room 505 under the bed, and the elevator is really a junior suite! Hotel Moral Relativity, I guess.

Finally, the Claremont's extraordinarily bizarre frequent guest program. Most hotels, if you've been there before, will say something like "Welcome back, Misterarthur." If they're not sure, they'll ask "Is this the first time you've stayed at __________?"
Not the Claremont. When I checked in, I was asked if I had a car parked in the lot. Then, when I was given my key, I was handed a piece of paper, which you'll see below.

Note the bizarre nature of the Claremont's "reward" program. 1) You have to stay 11 times to get an upgraded room! If they're going to give you an upgrade after making you stay multiple times, why not make it easier to do so by giving you one when you've stayed, oh, say, 10 times? 2) The letter, such as it is, promises an upgrade for my next stay. You're this close, Misterarthur, to a fabulous upgrade. 3) This is the craziest part. To take advantage of my eleventh stay upgrade, I have to keep this piece of paper. I have to redeem this "original, un-reproduced document to the Hotel Front Desk (sic)." This elegant gift certificate is good through November 2008. So I get to drag it around in my briefcase until the next time I check in. Haven't they computerized this sort of thing, yet? Berkeley, Berkeley. It insists on doing things its own way.

The Henley Park Hotel Washington, DC

2007-11-12T10:26:00.000-05:00

More musing on the malleability of the words "boutique hotel". The Henley Park is self described as a hotel that invites you to "Discover a retreat that artfully blends boutique-style luxury, personalized, Old World service, and the modern necessities required by today's business or leisure traveler.". So, I guess, boutique means: Luxury, Personalized Service, & Modern Necessities. That covers just about every hotel above a Motel Six, I think, so it really doesn't mean much any more. Here's what they mean by "Old World".

You can guess the real meaning: Cramped.

The Henley Palace does try to mitigate its old(e) world(e) charm by putting mirrors by the elevator doors, so when you get off on your floor you don't feel like Gulliver checking into the Lilliput Hilton.

The old(e) world(e) charm continues to the bathroom. Here you can see how the bathroom door barely clears the toilet bowl. In the second photo, that's my finger tip. If you want to close the door while you use the facilities, it requires a certain "human rubber band" capability.

There are some fine things about the Henley Park. Nice restaurant. Very nice people. Free Internet Access. Windows that open.

There are some not so nice things: They charge $4.40 for a cup of coffee in the morning (to go, in a paper cup). This wouldn't be so bad, but the in-room mini coffee pot (cleverly secreted in the closet) came with the smallest amount of coffee in its own filter I have ever seen. (Maybe two teaspoons, and the filter was so small it didn't come close to covering the bottom of the filter holder.) It's discouraging to see ecru water filling up the carafe. There's construction next door. But at least the workers put away their jackhammers at 4:30 and don't start up again until 7:00 am. Good Morning, Misterarthur. This is your jackhammerjackhammerjackhammerjackhammerjackhammer wake up call.

The Ace, Portland

2007-11-06T19:06:00.000-05:00

Dave "where's my guitar?" Bierman took this photo. It's of the Ace Hotel in Portland. You can tell it's uber hip because the owners have done virtually nothing to make it look like a nice hotel. I love the Fire Hose. So elemental! He says there are no amenities either, which follows that aesthetic to its core. It's so hip it hurts! The Ace is famous for its Cat Mural. Make of that what you will. I encourage you to click on the link to find out more about the place. After you sit through a bunch of slow-loading flash modules, you can sample its terminally precious "media relations" page and read the "concept release".

70 Park Avenue Hotel

2007-11-06T18:40:00.000-05:00

70 Park Avenue Hotel is a Kimpton property, self-described as a "New York City Boutique Hotel in Midtown Manhattan". I'm not sure what a boutique hotel is any more. I think Ian Schrager started the fad towards fancy, smaller hotels. Now a boutique hotel can be a fancy bigger hotel, like the W in San Francisco. The 70 Park Avenue is of the smaller variety.

It's quite nice 'n' trendy. The rooms have the requisite groovy toiletries. (L'Occitane)

The hallway is a little worrying.

The combination of dark, old and cramped reminded me of the movie 1408, with John Cusak and Samuel L. Jackson. Not a good sign. The out-of-nowhere stairs on the way to my room were interesting. Every time someone comes down the hall with a roller bag, you can hear 7 thumps as they descend.

Then I arrived at my room. It looked as though someone had tried to crowbar the metal door open, which I haven't successfully captured in this picture. Welcome to New York, circa 1985. The utility door isn't very welcoming either, I'd say. The hotel's web site claims the 70 Park Avenue is a "New York boutique hotel that feels like a second home". I'd agree, if your home were a 4th floor walkup in an old building with a cranky super.

The plate on the door holding the lock bolt was unconnected to the door itself, which made closing the door upon departure almost impossible. Fortunately the "engineer" (that's what the guy at the front desk called him) fixed it pronto. I must say, everyone was nice in this hotel. Very nice, indeed. Of course, like all expensive hotels, they charge for internet, dang it. I'm still mystified by the inverse correlation between hotel prices and free internet. Can someone give me a rational explanation of why this might be?

Once you arrive in your room, all worries are cast aside, as you're reminded by the bedspread of the name of your hotel. I know it's a good thing to be proud of your property, but for goodness' sakes, most guests are probably not Alzheimer's patients. I typically don't forget where I'm staying from check in to opening my room door.

There was another peculiarity that I failed to photograph. The toilet paper roll (in this case, easy to find, see prior post) had a sticker on it that encouraged guests to be "green". I'm all for saving the planet, but I will stick my neck out and say that toilet paper rolls are an odd place to flaunt your eco-creds.

n.b.: Be careful if you click on the 70 Park Avenue link. You'll hear a jazzy rip-off of the theme from "The Odd Couple".

The Hilton Garden Inn Hotel, Annapolis/now with warning

2007-11-06T17:59:00.000-05:00

I can find almost nothing to kvetch about when it comes to the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel. Well, the name is kind of redundant, isn't it? Why not really stretch: It already has four words, why stop there? "The Hilton Garden Inn Hotel Caravanserai Imaret Auberge Crib" has a nice ring to it, and Crib will appeal to all those gangsta kids from the suburbs whose parents are taking them to see Historic Annapolis.

There is, unfortunately, no garden to speak of - or at least none that I could find. A colleague pointed at a chunk of lawn and thought it might be the garden, but I think it was more of a verge. Anyway, this Inn Hotel just opened in June 2007, so it's very clean and lovely. Free coffee in the lobby, free internet (hooray), nice people, and nicely lit halls.

It also features the 21st Century equivalent of the old hide-the-vomit carpet pattern. Tres mod, n'est-ce pas?

Then the interior designer's "I must have it my way" hissy fit strikes. Here are two photos of the bathroom. It's quite nice, and being new, is shiny and tidy. A quiz for you Hotel Hallway readers: What can't you find in this bathroom?

Answer: The toilet paper. Toilet paper, I'm sure you'll agree, is one of the few musts in a bathroom. Oh it's there, just cleverly hidden so you can't easily locate it, even when you need it most, if you know what I mean. Rather than make you keep looking for it, I'll tell you: It's UNDER the sink counter. Now that you know where to look for it, you still won't be able to find it.

Finally, there's a mysterious poster in the elevator. (By the way, this is an official Hilton poster, not some rogue poster made up by the management of this particular Hotel Inn.)

Why on earth would a company try to make its guests feel welcome by asking rude questions? "I'm going to meet some friends, thanks, but frankly, it's none of your business."

UPDATE: A colleague just stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn, and her stay was marred by an uninterrupted series of woes, including a plugged (by a prior guest) toilet. Maybe I hit a good weekend. Maybe she hit a bad one. Whichever Garden Inn Hotel experience you can expect appears to be somewhat random. I warned you.

Comments

2007-09-27T10:01:00.000-04:00

I've started to get spam comments. "Omar" has been particularly persistent in trying to sell Hotel Hallways readers property in Costa Rica. Now, that may interest you, but it bugs me. So now you'll have to type in some random letters to add a comment. Sorry.

The Ritz-Carlton, Marina Del Rey

2007-09-25T22:21:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm back at the Ritz Carlton, and much is the same as the last time I visited. The people are still super friendly, and I mean they actually do go out of their way to make sure you've got what you need, the food's good, and the amenities by Bulgari (or is that Bvlgari) are very nice, indeed. The hallways are still bright yellow, with a giant pattern in the carpet.

I was luckier this time. My showerhead didn't flop around, and there weren't any fishy stains on the carpet. However, my "balcony" was barely wide enough to merit being called a balcony. (I'd suggest footcony).

In other news from the hotel, I noticed some strange verbiage on the emergency evacuation notice:

Think, for a moment, about the logic of this notice. 1) If you're blind, you can't read the sign, so writing that it "sounds like a whoop" and looks like a "strobe light" will be of no help whatsoever. 2) If you're deaf, you wouldn't know what a "whoop" sounds like, would you? Do you really need to point out the particulars of the emergency siren and lighting? I guess if I heard whoops and saw strobe lights, I'd skeedaddle, sign or not.

The Ritz-Carlton Marina Del Rey has those impossible-to-figure-out-how-to-work clock radios. Alarm 1, alarm 2, cd, am/fm radio, etc. Having stayed in many hotels, I thought I'd figured out just about every clock radio. But no, it failed to go off in the morning. As is my usual backup, I had asked for a wake-up call.

This is where the Ritz-Carlton deserves special kudos. I've gotten used to recorded voices for wake-up calls, and when I picked up the phone, there was a very brief silence, which I took to be the recording kicking in. So I didn't say anything. Then, wonder of wonders, there was a real, human voice on the other end. How nice to start the day talking to a person.

I did miss the valet guy with the top hat (see earlier post), I hope it was just his day off. And I'm miffed that the hotel charges $9.95 for internet (non-wireless) access.

I will admit that the Ritz Carlton Marina Del Rey has very nice chandeliers in the elevators.

The Lodge at Sonoma, a Renaissance Resort and Spa by Marriott

2007-09-12T19:39:00.000-04:00

The LASARRASBM is a swanky hotel-cum-spa in the heart of California's wine country. I struggled with posting this, because it truly has no hotel hallways, per se. It has sidewalks connecting cottagey units, each with four uppers and four downers. (Not drugs. I'm speaking architecturally.) It's very nice. The Spa portion I cannot speak to, as I didn't have the opportunity to avail myself of its no doubt healing mystical hotstone, massage, mineral bath foot kneading, etc. The resort part was a little skimpy. As far as I could tell, the resort portion consisted of a pool and an inground hot tub. It has some nice conference rooms, (but they're not a resort feature in my mind). There's a nicely flickering gas fire in the large lobby...again, not in and of itself adding to its resortness, but undeniably pleasant. The Lodge at Sonoma, a Renaissance Resort and Spa by Marriott has the tastiest bacon I've ever eaten. If you like bacon, that's reason enough for a visit, resort features be damned. My "cottage" was at the far end of the property. Here's a visual tour of what it takes to get from the cottage to the main building.

1) Descend stairs from cottage

2) Turn left, and walk down path A

2) Turn left again, take a quick right, and walk down path B

3) Turn left and right again, and walk down path C

4) Do a quick zig-zag, and walk down path D

5) Pass the ice machine, which has its own little house.

6) You're in the home stretch now...continue down path E

7) A final zig zag, and you're at the pool. For some reason, you have to go through a gate giving you access to the pool deck.

8) There's your destination. The lobby, restaurant, gift shop, bar, front door, etc.

All is well. Unless, of course, you've forgotten your sunglasses or wallet or something, in which case it will take you 15 minutes or so to complete the return voyage. Enough of this, and you'll need more bacon. Or possibly a facial.

Marriott Waukegan

2007-08-23T15:18:00.000-04:00

I gotta give it up to the merry band of web copy writers charged with making the Marriott Waukegan seem inviting and attractive. (Sorry. Official name is Courtyard Chicago Waukegan/Gurnee. Can't you hear the hotel operator?) The number one "highlight" of the hotel, according to the site, is the fact that it's non-smoking. Beyond that, the superlatives begin to fade.

Here are a couple of blurbs:

1) "Enjoy high-speed Internet access, premium pay movies and free in-room coffee. " I know I enjoy premium pay movies.

2) " Or relax in our lobby - a great place to unwind or meet with friends and colleagues." Everyone agrees. the lobbies of Marriott Courtyards are where everyone wants to meet and unwind.
Ah well, they tried.

If you're a serious reader of this blog, you'll notice the pattern's resemblance to the Doubletree in Santa Monica, which is kind of odd, as Doubletrees are owned by Hilton, not Marriott.

Kudos to Davezilla for this excellent shot. (He has a very distinctive style of photography; see Ritz Carlton Marina Del Rey photo in earlier post.)

The Doubletree in Dallas

2007-08-23T14:50:00.001-04:00

Well, my Treo's been replaced, and I'm able to document again. I had the debatable pleasure of staying at the Doubletree in Dallas - or in typical over-inflated hotel hype copy, (complete with faux-British spelling) The Doubletree Hotel Dallas-Campbell Centre. Some issues of note: The hallway is not, at arrival, particularly welcoming (i.e. dim).

That's nothing new; perhaps the hospitality industry is trying to pitch in and save the planet by forgoing lighting in the halls.

What was unexpected were these white chunks on the carpet.

Oops, that dang falling plaster problem again. (You'd think someone working at the hotel would've noticed the hole in the ceiling, for goodness' sakes.)

But, no, I guess they were too busy polishing their resumes or something. Maybe the plaster chunks are part of the mysterious "ambient decor" referred to in the web copy:

"Our 300 oversized Guestrooms and Suites are geared for comfort and convenience, and are richly appointed with floor to ceiling windows and ambient decor."

Another interesting point. I've seen odd ice machine signs before, but this one now heads my list.

Too much stress. (By the way, I figure most people will take the elevator to get their drinks or ice, which probably negates any energy savings that would accrue by keeping the halls dim).

Help! I can't find my Treo

2007-06-15T14:42:00.000-04:00

It has photos of my latest hall-a-rama, the Courtyard by Marriott in Newport Rhode Island. Will post as soon as I locate it. I know my recent lack of hall snaps is upsetting to the 8-10 people who read this blog.

Hyatt Monterey "Spa and Resort"

2007-06-01T13:33:00.001-04:00

Why you should read the website before you book a room.

Exhibit #1: The Hyatt Regency Monterey.

The Hyatt Monterey is one of those flat hotels. One building for checking in, many other low (3-story) buildings placed decoratively around it. It's one of those hotels where you park your car, then drag your luggage into reception, where you are then shown a map to locate your room number, which is in a building 1/4 of a mile away. Then you drag your luggage back to the car and drive to your room. These hotels always have a herd of extended-length golf carts parked, driverless, around the grounds.

But anyway, here's what I didn't read before I left.

"There are big plans afoot for renovating the Hyatt in Monterey: "We are very excited to announce the commencement of our $45 million renovation project. The new Hyatt Regency Monterey – the only hotel in the city of Monterey located adjacent to a golf course - will remain the largest hotel between the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles, and will feature a stunning new full-service spa and world-class amenities for our guests’ enjoyment."

Thanks. I love big plans, especially when they're afoot.

Please note the tense. Will, will, will. Not is, is, is.

It's actually kind of grim. Dank, in a near the ocean kind of way. Unhelpful signage. I was in building #9. To get to my room, I had to actually go to building #10 to get to the elevator that served both buildings. The carpet had the biggest hide-the-vomit pattern I've seen in a while. (Sorry I didn't put my feet in the photo for reference purposes).

Then there's this odd emergency exit information. Like most hotels, it has a map that shows a handy "You are here" red dot, plus where to find the emergency exit and stairs. Unlike most places I've stayed, it also provides the location of the ice machine(s). I don't know why you'd need to know the location of the ice machines in an emergency. Maybe it's for super-nervous people who need a slug of gin before they can tackle walking down three flights of stairs. I'm not sure.

Stuck in the '70s in Little Rock

2007-05-25T17:44:00.000-04:00

I like Little Rock. I like Arkansas, too, but it must be tiring to have to perpetually defend your state against ignorant blowholes who believe that everyone who lives there is backwards and chromosome-damaged. If you want to change your attitude about Razorback world headquarters, stay in one of the two really nice hotels in Little Rock.The Capital and The Jefferson. (Both are reputed to have been assignation locations for former Governor Big Bill Clinton.)

Then there's the Wyndham, where you're more likely to run into a high school class from Hot Springs checking out the capital, and generally tearing up the hotel, like teens are wont to do. (Come to think of it, they might attract our former President as well). The Wyndham could be a Smithsonian Exhibit of Hotel architecture, circa 1973. Check out those bricks! And that typography! Yeah, yeah, they've 'updated' the carpet with a more 'modern' design. (It actually clashes with the walls, I think. It might have been better to go retro and put in some shag). And that wainscoting certainly gives it a sort of quasi colonial feel. If you're hallucinating.

It's no use. The basic structure has all the charm of a DMV building. The Wyndham Little Rock also has the loudest in-room air conditioners my colleague has ever heard. And that's saying something. Maybe they hope abusing one sense (your hearing) will make another sense (your sight) less sensitive. Who knows? Let us repair to the hotel's Steakhouse. Or, if you prefer, the hotel's Steakhouse.

If you're wondering, (see prior post) yes, the hotel's web site does say that the hotel is "in the heart of downtown North Little Rock". I will give some props to the writer of the Wyndham North Little Rock's web pages for at least trying to add some words to the hotel-desciber's lexicon. Copied and pasted from the WNLR's web site: "Count on comfort and performance in a spacious guest room..." I'm going to start looking for performance in my next room, that's for sure. Photos courtesy of Casey "has anyone seen Casey lately?" Ingle.

Calling The Mayo Clinic

2007-05-04T20:57:00.000-04:00

I think the "Hospitality Industry" must have done a massive secret survey of the traveling public and determined that every successful hotel web site must contain four magic words. "In the heart of". Either that or web writers have a secret fear they're going to suddenly collapse onto their keyboards with massive myocardial infarctions.
Here's the evidence, gathered solely from the hotels whose hallways I've posted about below.
According to their respective web sites:

The Amway Grand is "conveniently located in the heart of the downtown Grand Rapids' business and entertainment district"

The Sheraton Crystal City is "..nestled in the heart of Crystal City"

The Doubletree Santa Monica is "...in the heart of Santa Monica"

The Omni Chicago is "Located in the heart of the "Magnificent Mile"

The Jefferson is "Located in the heart of downtown Richmond Virginia"

The Marriott East Lansing is "Located in the heart of the downtown business district"

As a public service, here are some synonyms for these clearly over-worked writers to use. Middle, nerve center, core, hub, center, and nexus. Feel free to use one.

The Amway Grand

2007-05-03T14:08:00.000-04:00

A very Calvinist hallway, I'd say, which fits perfectly with the Amway Grand Hotel's location in Grand Rapids, Michigan, home of former President Gerald Ford and the pyramid-scheme-disguised-as-"Multilevel Marketing"-phenomenon known as Amway. The Protestant purist ethos is in full bloom here, with a severly patterned carpet, functional toe moldings, discreet wall tones and inoffensive photographs. I will say, the red and off-white carpet is kind of a relief from the blue-dominant designs I've been treading on lately. And best of all, part of their web site appears to have been authored by the same writer who scripted the English-As-A-Second-Language exit sign at the Sheraton Crystal City. (See post below). Here's what it says, copied and pasted verbatim from the hotel's "In Room Amenities" page: "On top of that, you'll enjoy these thoughtful amenities for a more comfort stay:"

I'm all for a more comfort stay.

Thanks to Casey "on the road again and I'm still angry" Ingle for the photo

The Sheraton Crystal City

2007-05-01T14:36:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Washington, D.C. It needs lots of hotel rooms for all those people hungering after government lucre. The hotels can't fit in the city proper, so many of them are congregated in Crystal City, Virginia. Crystal City isn't a city, by the way, it's an "unincorporated area". I guess Sheraton Unincorporated Area doesn't summon up the kind of luxury images that would get you cough up the steep rates the hotel charges. But anyway, I had a reservation and when I got the to the hotel, I was was pleasantly surpised by being given a room on the CLUB LEVEL.

You know this is a good, luxury thing, because of the giant script "L". If it had been in the same font & size as the c,l,u,b and e,v,e,l, it wouldn't be as nice. Here's the weird thing. I couldn't find anything that distinguishes the Club Level from the non Club Level. Nothing looked, felt, or smelled like a Club Level. I don't think this nice strip of Duct Tape (r) (PHOTO ONE) makes it club level-ish. Nor do the dual holes in the carpet(PHOTO TWO). Maybe the ice machine is what gives the club level its special achievement of clubness (PHOTO THREE).

There was an interesting sign on the exit door, which I think was either a sad commentary on the hotel's expected popularity or it was written by a recent graduate of an English as a Second Language course. I see that this door cannot be re-entered by the guest. (Why didn't they just go ahead and capitalize "be" along with every other word?)

But here's a cheery note. I think I've spotted a design trend. The Sheraton Unincorporated Area/Crystal City has The Same Pattern Interruptus carpet scheme as the Doubletree in Santa Monica. (See Prior Post). Was this some kind of hotel interior design trend from 1989? Patterned carpet, strip of brown, patterned carpet. Who thought this looked good? (The stringy thing is carpet backing)

For a grand finale, The Sheraton Crystal City (or Sheraton CC as us insiders call it) has a very mysterious elevator button. Maybe you can tell me what it really means. My guess is that it means you should push it when you realize help is on the way, but not before.

The Doubletree, Santa Monica, California

2007-04-25T16:38:00.000-04:00

Ah, the Doubletree. This little wonder poses an interesting conundrum to the intrepid chronicler-of-hotel-hallways; viz.: It doesn't have halls, per se. They're open on one side. And this blog isn't "Hotel Half-Hallways". So let's treat these like full, adult hallways with two walls, and not a railing and one wall. A couple of interesting notes: 1) You can see other hallways simultaneously. 2) There is an interesting design element that made sense to someone, but not to me. You see, the architect specified a nice big window next to the "hallway", which makes sense on one hand, because it lets in light. On the other, leaving the curtain open (to let in said light) prevents you from having any privacy whatsoever, particularly, (as noted above) since you can see into that window from multiple floors and/or vantage points. So if you value keeping your business your business, you need to close the curtain to the window, which reduces its light-passing capabilities to the point of unusability. It was a nice thought, however.

That can't be said about the oddball carpet "pattern interruptus" you see in the bottom photo. I can't decide whether this was done on purpose ("my vision! my vision!" quoth the interior designer) or because they didn't order quite enough carpet to cover the floor, and had to fill in with remnants that "sort of" matched the main pattern. I say "sort of" because not much ties it to the main swirly pattern beyond the fact that it is a) made of carpeting and b) is the same nap length as the patterny bits. Is there a logic to this that I'm not quite understanding?

What's that white blobby thing in the middle photo?

And why on earth did they call a chain of hotels "Doubletree"? Were the owners (now Hilton, as in "Doubletree by Hilton"), overly wowed by the Doublemint twins as youngsters? Did they think a double tree sounds more impressive than a single tree? If so, why stop with two? Why not Tripletree or Quadratree? I actually found a definition (sketchy, but the best I could do with a short-ish web search) for doubletree, since its definition didn't spring to mind. Here it is:

"Doubletree. A pivoted bar with a whippletree attached to each end, used in harnessing two animals abreast to pull a wagon, plow, etc."

That says comfortable lodging, doesn't it? (I don't know what a whippletree is, either). Ah, but here's something to think about. I will do the logic for you, and let you draw your own conclusions. A) Paris and Nicky Hilton B) (From the definition above): "Harnessing two animals abreast to pull a wagon." There you go. Mystery solved.

Thanks to Casey (I'm an angry man) Ingle for the photos.

Hotel of the week The Sod Hut

2007-04-01T10:45:00.000-04:00

This charmer has one room, no hall, no windows, no room service, no magnetic keys, no mini-bar, no tv, no complimentary city guides, no telephone, no business center, no $6.00 bottles of water, no ice machine, no valet parking, no breakfast buffet, no concierge, no reception desk, no conference facilities, no mints on your pillow, no pillow, no sheets, no bed, no tv, no soap, no shampoo, no sewing kit, no lights, no internet access at any price, and no hot or cold running water. Happy April 1.

The Dylan

2007-03-30T10:29:00.000-04:00

Talk about Hip! Talk about Luxury! As the hotel's website says: "When you enter The Dylan Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, you are transported to a world of beauty, art and refinement." Wow! Just look at that refined table. Admire the beauty of the outlet. Marvel at the artistic treatment of the emergency sign. This says class with a capital c. Check out those artfully "arranged" magazines. They embody the nonchalant chic that is today's upper class. (They have a scent of nostalgia, too, since they're from 2006). Enough. Let's savor the beige and revel in our good taste for choosing the Dylan!

Hotel of the Week: Molodezhnaya

2007-03-24T08:53:00.000-04:00

For all of you who are planning a trip to Omsk, consider the Molodezhnaya hotel. Looks fancy enough from the outside, (though at the same time, it appears as if the modern building is about to crash into that older specimen). They do seem to have saved a good portion of their funds by not specifying any art for the rooms. And it looks as though there's space dedicated for your latest business off-site. I'm not sure which businesses would need to go to Omsk; it is the home of SibGAFK, The Siberian Academy of Physical Culture - maybe representatives of gymnastic equipment manufacturers have their convention in Omsk. While the population of Omsk is over a million happy, and probably gelid, souls, there's some bad news for fans of public transportation. "A subway system, proposed in the late 1980s, but postponed for lack of funds, is currently under construction, with the Metro bridge over the Irtysh river. The bridge is already opened for cars (upper level), but the metro (lower level) is still under construction." Darn it. I also found this eerie description of Omsk, which I have copied-and-pasted here in its entirety: "Everyone who has once visited Omsk notices its openness and peculiarity."

The Omni, Chicago

2007-03-21T09:03:00.000-04:00

Hey there, Mr. Business Executive, living large on the road. Welcome to the Omni Chicago, just steps from the Magnificent Mile. (Oddly, the address is given as being on Michigan Avenue, even though the entrance is not on Michigan Avenue itself). So, after a hard day of being master of the universe, you retire to your hotel for a well deserved rest. This is the hall you encounter. This time, the Treo's shabby photographic performance actually does the hallway justice. It's as grim and dim as the photo shows. Greenish, textured wallpaper, overly-subdued lighting, and a forgettable rug pattern.
The Omni website says: "Every space exudes the luxury and sophistication you expect from a four-diamond hotel."
I say: "Not quite every space". Halls are spaces, too.
Omni website says: ... "or, retreat to the comforts of your spacious guest suite, said to be among the finest in all of Chicago."
I say: "Said by whom?"
They say: ..."the Omni Chicago Hotel is one of the best-loved hotels in downtown Chicago."
I say: "This is not a good place to carefully examine what your purpose in life is."

Greetings from Greece

2007-03-20T18:00:00.000-04:00

For inexplicable reasons, I've been linked by a Greek blog called Olatsaba. I can't speak or read Greek, so I translated the post into "English" via world.altavista.com. Here's what it says:

Ma'gkes, what you seat and deal with problems, what holoska'te and you worry? you I have here a mplogka'kj, that deals......... with corridors of hotels......... yes with corridors of hotels.....

http://hotelhallways.blogspot.com/

and the life acquires new meaning after this...

Praise from Linkb*tch.com

2007-03-20T12:54:00.001-04:00

The site's pov on my blog (in its entirety):

"blog are always pointless, this one takes it further than simply pointless"

Ritz Carlton, Marina Del Rey

2007-03-16T10:25:00.000-04:00

Once again, my Treo fails me. Its photographic output is so lame you can't get the true impact of the upstairs halls of the Ritz Carlton, Marina Del Rey. They are yellow. Really yellow. So yellow, they would make you go back into your room to rest your eyes if you happened to wake up with a tremendous hangover and left your chamber to saunter downstairs for a cup of coffee and a croissant. They're yellow. Nice carpet pattern, though. Interlocking rings of blue. Nautically-themed prints on the walls.

Downstairs, things are more subdued. Browner hues prevail. The nautical theme continues, but leaps back a century or two. Where the upstairs halls' wall decorations are modern photography (mostly of water & reflections), this downstairs features (you can just make it out on the right) a model of a late 18th or early 19th Century US Navy Frigate (of no great renown). Look, I have nothing against nautical themes, and this hotel is right on the Marina of the eponymous Del Rey, so there's some justification for them. But this hotel was clearly built in the last decades of the 20th century, so why try to overlay it with phony history? The Ritz-Carlton is a lovely chain of hotels, and doesn't need Disneyfying. Nevertheless, I think it's beginning to stumble a bit. The people that work at the hotel were, to a person charming and welcoming. The idiotically-named restaurant, the "Jer-Ne", (Get it, nudge nudge?) is really good, the location is handy, the head valet parking guy wears a top hat, (poor man), etc., but here's the thing. My sink was cracked, the drain in said sink was 3/4 clogged, the shower head flopped around and refused to aim anywhere but straight up and down - which I could have fixed, had I only had a screwdriver with me - and there was a dodgy looking stain on the carpet at the foot of my bed. But hey! That yellow hall upstairs perked me right up.

Addendum: Lovely photos from Davezilla that better show off the decor. (Those are the actual feet of Davezilla himself!)

Hotel of the Week: Plaza Fuerte, Montevideo

2007-03-11T12:00:00.000-04:00

I have never been to Uruguay, much less Montevideo, but if I ever go, here's where I'm going to stay. Finally, a hotel with the courage to feature its hallways online! Why can't more hotels do this? (Probably because they're not nearly as impressive as those of the mighty Plaza Fuerte). If the hallways aren't reason enough to book a room, here are some others: 1) It's a National Historical Building. 2) The Special Rooms come with tantalizing features, which need further exploration: "Two kinds of 40m2 rooms: with living room and bedroom on separated levels, or in one level with jacuzzi. Both equiped with sommier bed extra full , Cable TV, wi-fi internet access, security box, frigo-bar." If someone knows what a sommier bed or frigo bar is, please let me know.

Let's get going!

The Jefferson Hotel, Richmond, Virginia

2007-03-07T20:55:00.000-05:00

I thought the Jefferson Hotel was best known for its bronze alligator sculptures, but I could be wrong. It could be best-known for its halls. Who wouldn't love this? Patterned carpet, break, patterned carpet, break, patterned carpet, break. It's like the visual equivalent of the kid riding his Big Wheel through the abandoned hotel in The Shining. Remember the sound going from marble to carpet to marble to carpet? RRRRRRRRR silence. RRRRRRRRR silence. RRRRRRRRR silence. This is just like that, but for your eyes, only. Oddly, the Jefferson does not mention its halls on its web site. It does say: "The Jefferson comes replete with rich tapestries, antique replica furniture, embellished faux-marble columns, a 70-foot high ceiling with a stained-glass skylight, and a magnificent sweeping staircase hauntingly similar to the one in Gone With the Wind." If your staircase causes nightmares, I wouldn't point that out to potential guests. Here's something else I find irksome about the Jefferson's blurb: The misuse of the word "replete". "Creative" writers often use "replete" as a fancier-sounding synonym for "complete". Sorry. "Replete" means "festooned" or "decorated". Though maybe they do mean the walls are festooned with antique replica furniture and faux-marble columns. What is replica furniture, anyway? Can you have modern replica furniture? Cotemporary replica furniture? It's not real furniture, I guess, just a simulacrum. And, answer this: What are "embellished faux-marble columns"? The faux-marble thing I get. What confuses me is the embellished part. What do you think they're embellished with? Medallions? Bas reliefs? Reflectors? Slippery when wet stickers? Enough already.

Hotel of the Week: Cayenne Central

2007-03-05T20:54:00.000-05:00

Fancy a trip to French Guiana? Perhaps your travels will lead you to the northern part of South America...perchance to visit the European space center, just minutes from Cayenne? If so, you might consider the Cayenne Central hotel. (Their web site is down, unfortunately).

Good news from the outside, anyway: There is no way the halls can be very long.

Here's a snap of the interior, in case you never get there.

Good news: The rooms are soundproof. (Or so they claim).

The Berkeley Hotel, Richmond

2007-03-05T20:45:00.001-05:00

Some hotel in Richmond, VA, courtesy the still traveling C. Ingle. Note the familiar decor devices we see here. Off-white paint. Beige-ish wallpaper. Patterned carpet. Nothing offensive. Nothing distinctive. Carpet specially selected to hide stains and provide years of use. At least the hallway is short.

Whee!

2007-03-02T08:13:00.000-05:00

The Holiday Inn, Arlington, Virginia. Thanks to Traveling Man Casey Ingle for this excellent snap of a memorable hall.
Nothing says holiday like paisley and beige, I say. When you say Christmas, Easter, Summer Vacation, Memorial Day, or Valentine's Day, the first thing I thing of is beige and paisley. Interestingly (or not) the Holiday Inn home page invites you to "Look Again"... an advertising agency's "clever" way of trying to tell you that Holiday Inn has changed since the last time you were there. You see, it's too easy to say we've changed for the better, or we've redecorated our space so it's nice and new. You need a snappy phrase like "Look Again"... and a 300-page powerpoint deck explaining why "look again" is powerful, differentiating, memorable, inspiring, etc., etc., It boggles the mind to think about how much "Look Again" cost Holiday Inn.

This week's hotel: Welcome to Mongolia

2007-02-27T20:32:00.000-05:00

This is the Hotel Kharkorum, in downtown Ulan Bator - er - Ulaanbaatar -er there doesn't seem to be concurrence on the English spelling of the Mongolian Capital. It's downtown, across the street from a Monastery (could be good or bad, I guess), and yet again, no photos on the web of its hallways. Cowards.

The Claremont: A hotel defined by its hallways.

2007-02-16T12:48:00.000-05:00

The Claremont "Resort and Spa" is a lovely hotel, for the most part. It has a tremendous location, near the University of California at Berkeley. It sits proudly on a hill, with a panoramic view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge. It has a very good restaurant, with a deck facing said view. It has spa facilities (which I've never used), tennis courts, a gym, facials, footcials, etc., etc. The lobby is palatial. The service is friendly. None of this prepares you for the creepiest hallways in hoteldom. The universal reaction is: The Adams Family or the Munsters. They're so wide you could drive an armoured personnel carrier down the middle of them. The ceilings are low. The lighting is dim (as if they'd turned the original gas fixtures into sconces) and the paint color looks as if it was originally way-off white, then subjected to 30 years of nicotine stain. There is furniture placed haphazardly along their lengths. The rooms are similarly dim, though green, with salmon textured carpet. (The bathrooms have been updated). The Claremont has excellent in-room coffee (Seattle's Best), and in most every respect is a nice place to stay. But those hallways! Those hallways! You walk down them late at night, and expect to see William Holden and Gloria Swanson stagger, lipstick-smeared and reeking of bourbon, from their tryst-a-teria, only to run into Anthony Perkins coming from the other direction. Ask anyone who's been there: the first thing out of his or her mouth will be: Creepy Hallways.

Hotel of the Week: Hotel Belarus

2007-02-11T22:16:00.000-05:00

I have not an iota of an idea what this hotel is like. It's in Minsk, so it has that going for it. However, judging by the architecture, I'd venture to say that it has very long hallways. (I'll bet it has central elevators, and it looks like a long trudge if you've got a room at either end.) Its web page is only in Russian, which I can't speak. If you can, you can read this part here:

Одна из лучших гостиниц г. Минска. Отель «Беларусь» расположен в историческом центре города, в 45 минутах езды до аэропорта «Минск-2» и в 10 минутах до ж/д вокзала, на берегу реки Свислочь. Месторасположение имеет несомненное преимущество: близость к деловому, административному, торговому центру г. Минска совмещается с обособленностью от шума и суеты большого города.

Much better photo of the JW Marriot Denver at Cherry Creek Hallway

2007-02-10T14:51:00.000-05:00

Here's a much better photo of the hallway described below. Photo courtesy of Dave Linabury, author and creator of the always excellent Davezilla

Props to JW Marriott

2007-02-07T19:40:00.001-05:00

Marriott hits for the cycle this week. This is the 7th floor hallway of the JW Marriott in chi-chi Cherry Creek, Colorado. (I think the "JW" addition to the front of "Marriott" means this is the luxe Marriott brand). The official name, by the way, is JW Marriott Denver at Cherry Creek. Gotta give it up for this hotel hallway. The photo, unfortunately doesn't do it justice. (That dang Treo makes everything look green). Here's what makes this hallway a keeper. 1) The elevator banks neatly bisect the hall, thus giving no preferential treatment to people who have to turn right or left. 2) Nice lighting. Though the picture quality may be too poor to show, there are nice wall sconces and ceiling fixtures. The piece (don't know how to do accents, sorry) de resistance are the individual halogens above each doorway. 3) The carpet is basically blue, with gold, green, yellow, beige, red, maroon, orange, pomegranate, and ecru. What a feast of lovely colors. 4) High enough ceilings to make professional basketball players feel at home. I know, because some of the Charlotte Hornets are staying on my floor.

Atlanta Residence Inn

2007-02-05T19:51:00.001-05:00

Marriott goes three for three, this time in the guise of a Residence Inn (owned by Marriott). Come on in and live here for a while. This artfully assembled hallway features subtly-shaded striped wallpaper and a boldly-patterned carpet designed to do one or two things: First, the bold pattern is like a road map for businessmen who've spent a little too much time at the free drinks section of their regional convention down the hall. It keeps them from making inadvertent right or left turns before they get to their room. The second is that the pattern is famous for hiding vomit stains.

Grim in Lansing

2007-02-05T10:28:00.001-05:00

Marriott makes a double appearance this week. This is the state-prison-inspired Marriott in Lansing, Michigan. Nothing says welcome like tile and fluorescents, I say. Maybe people that visit this hotel have gastro-enteric issues; tile is easy to clean.
Did the "interior designer" think that breaking up the floor into little squares would make you feel more comfortable?
But here's the thing. The rooms are supposed to look like this:

I guess they wanted the room's decor to be a shock after the industrial-strength greeting you get from the hallways.

Hotel of the Week: Grand Hotel Tremezzo Palace

2007-02-04T14:20:00.001-05:00

If you want to visit Lake Como, (and who wouldn't?) try the Grand Hotel Tremezzo Palace. Nice wide hallways, (though the wood floors creak a bit). Hydrangeas galore in the back, and as promised, a spectacular view of Lake Como in the front. No idea if it's a good place to spot George Clooney. (I didn't see him when I was there). Very nice hallways, indeed.

Lousy Hotel Room Coffee.

2007-02-04T09:49:00.001-05:00

From The Raw Feed:
"In-Room Hotel Coffee Pots Used As "Meth Labs".

Did that coffee you brewed last time you stayed in a hotel taste funny? Local cops in Alabama warn travelers to avoid using the coffee pots in hotel rooms, because sometimes drug dealer types use the pots as MINI-METH LABS".

I'd add that you shouldn't freak out. Much hotel "coffee" is really hideous. It might not be left-over meth after all.

This doesn't look very inviting

2007-02-03T20:55:00.001-05:00

It's a hotel in Berlin. I've never been there.

What? No free Internet?

2007-02-03T17:42:00.000-05:00

Sorry, no photo of the hallway. Yet. I've stayed at the Four Seasons in Mountain View, California. It's at the virtual epicenter of Silicon Valley, as indicated by its snappy moniker. It's not cheap, it's beautiful, the staff is accomodating and super nice, and the halls are pretty. Here's my beef. They charge for internet access. Tut tut. The Doubletree in Memphis has free wifi for goodness sakes.

Ed wants to know

2007-02-02T21:33:00.002-05:00

So what's the deal with hallways? Well, they are something the brochure (digital or paper) never show. Halls can be exciting...like when you're going on vacation with the expectation of it leading to a great room. Or willielomanesque, when you're on a business trip, exhausted and you realize your room is 200 yards from the elevator shaft. They're also a good indication of the hotel's popularity. If you get up early enough you can see how many rooms have USA Todays in front of the doors. The photos of the Marriott SFO have an odd greenish tint (my phone camera) which seems entirely appropriate, as I had been up for 22 1/2 hours the day before and had only had 4 hours of sleep when I took the photo on the way to the airport shuttle bus.

Marriott Hotel, San Francisco Airport

2007-02-02T11:27:00.001-05:00

This lovely set of halls represent two-thirds of the distance from the elevator bank to my room. It would have had a nice view, but I was only there from 1:30 am until 6:00 am Thursday Morning. They've recently remodeled the hotel, but left the super-cheezy dropped acoustic tile ceiling in the bathroom. No free wireless, neither. Coffee machine well hidden (though it was 1:30 in the morning).