The Claremont

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The Christmas decorations have been replaced by a piano that no appears to have been hired to play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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.