Hotel Review: Summerfield Suites, Denver Tech Center, Colorado

A delayed start to our Christmas trip due to London Heathrow's inability to cope with snow, but luckily the Summerfield Suites were flexible and let us change our dates.

One of the attractions of the place was the full-sized kitchen - we were able to cook a Christmas dinner in our room, which was great.

The Tech Center is pretty well-placed for Denver trips - fifteen minutes at most from the heart of Denver, a couple of minutes from Park Meadows and all that's on offer there.

The Suites has a small shop, views across to the mountains (ask for one, it's worth having), friendly staff and a guest laundry.

There's a hottub and pool, which people were still braving despite the freezing temperatures outside; breakfast is pretty good for a comp - wide range of hot and cold items; there's a sundowner evening meal some nights which is fine if you're a meat-eater.

The only downside is that the doors are little over-emphatic in their closing - we managed to get a passive-aggressive note from the elderly couple next door after our door slammed behind me while I was carrying two cups of coffee and a tray of eggs going in. Avoid this hotel if you're unable to cope with the odd piece of noise.

The sofas are big, and comfy - designed to be relaxed on rather than just a holding bay until you give up and go to bed like in some suites.

In short: loved this hotel, and will definitely use it again in future.

Hotel Review: Hilton Chicago O'Hare Airport

Arrival isn't great - you come through a strange underground path from the airport, picking your way past the buskers and panhandlers. Eventually, you'll find an uphill slope to struggle up, and an entrance way.

The entrance way seems incredibly insecure - no sign of any hotel staff there, which given it opens onto the warren of tunnels connecting ORD with outside isn't great; what makes it worse is the horrible signage. There's a bank of lifts, with a sign 'Check-in on Lobby Level" and another sign saying "LL". So this is Lobby Level, right?

Um, no - it turns out after you've walked the length of the floor that "LL" actually means Lower Level, Lobby Level is identified by an L. The sign inside the lift tells you this - but couldn't the sign outside the lift be a little clearer?

Once you're out the lift, you have to continue plodding past some sort of sub-souk area flogging geegaws and trinkets before you get to the check-in desk.

To the hotel's credit, check-in was fast (once we'd made it there) and friendly enough.

Inside, the hotel is in desperate need of a refit - there's parts of the floor where the carpet is lying over what feels like chipboard put down over a hole; the common area decoration is stuck in the brown and gold era of the 1970s. It's clean enough, but just tired.

The room itself was fine, comfy, and two complementary waters were welcome.

Trouble was, it was roasting hot. We fiddled with the thermostat (also appeared to be 1970s vintage) but couldn't get the room any cooler, so rang the desk. The desk were quite snitty, snapping that it was below 50F outside and so the hotel only had heat on - the system is so out-of-date apparently all rooms either get heat, or cooling, but can't have both. He suggested we'd be better off switching off the fan and then that we open the window. (Oddly, the hotel had decided it was so cold outside it needed to have the heat on, but wasn't thinking it was too cold to have the window open).

The window only opened full or not at all, and was knee-to-floor height, but anything was better than the cookie-bake heat otherwise. It did mean we only got fitful sleep as the sounds of the airport and roaring wind hammered in through the window all night, though.

Seriously: a 700 room hotel that expects *all* its guests to either want heat or cooling?

The location, though, is excellent - up early for the flight, but not as early as we'd have to have been if we'd been on another 'airport' hotel. Quick tip, though: don't go outdoors to get to the terminal, as the surfaces on the roads and pavements are dreadful; you'll find your trolley keeps getting wedged and tipping over.

In addition, they ding you for the cost of USA Today - you can say no at check in, but they don't tell you until you get your check-out summary. We paid 75cents for a paper on a day they weren't even publishing. A mean little trick.

Also mean: if you order in-room breakfast, you have to pay 18% as a "gratuity" (shouldn't the size of a gratuity - if any - be down to the customer? Otherwise it's a service charge); then there's a 4% admin fee, and then on top of that another $5 in-room dining fee. It's not clear what the in-room dining fee covers that the gratuity doesn't, or what the admin fee is and how that differs from an in-room dining fee. I don't mind the idea that you have to pay to have yo ur food brought to your room, but the idea of paying three times to have the food brought up seems a bit extreme. Have your breakfast once you're at the airport.

[cross-posted from Tripadvisor]

Hotel Review: Homewood Suites, Denver Tech Center

Duck-themed delights from the off with this hotel - a gorgeous welcome pack, including a personalised note with the expected weather for the week and some water and biscuits.

There was an ominous note as the hotel was sprinkled with warnings about thefts from the car parks of hotels in the area (something, oddly, we've not seen at other hotels in the area).

The food looked and smelled great - didn't eat much in the hotel as the delights of Denver were calling.

The tech centre is well-placed, up to a point - you're quickly on i25 and just moments away from E470 (so the airport is a breeze, if you're happy to pay for the road), and you have Park Meadows on your doorstep. If your doings are more deeply in Denver proper, it's you call if you want to pay more to stay closer into the city or add a fifteen minute trip to get to Downtown.

[Originally written for TripAdvisor]

Hotel Review: Doubletree ORD (Rosemont, Chicago)

To be fair to any and all airport hotels, most of your clientele are going to be folded up and grumpy by the time they arrive, and the threatening and unfriendly underpasses you have to scramble through - avoiding the fake taxi dudes, the panhandlers and buskers - to get to the shuttle at ORD aren't the fault of the hotel.

However, the printed literature for the hotel promised a shuttle every ten minutes. That has now been cut to an almost worse-than-useless two an hour (admittedly, the website now admits this). You're looking at a $20 taxi ride otherwise.

I know times are tough, but this cutting back of the shuttle just chips the value off the edge of the stay. Not only do you have to stand in the chill of the night waiting for twenty-five minutes for the drive to the hotel, but the courtesy bus is groaning and takes ages to load up and unload.

Almost an hour to get to the hotel doesn't really make it count as an airport hotel in any strict sense of the word.

At night, the drive to the Doubletree feels like you're being taken through the backstreets of a Soviet-era Russian bureaucatic city centre. Daylight makes it look less unwelcoming, so if you do stay here but arrive at night, you'll need to suspend your feelings that you're about to be dumped in a gulag.

The driver, naturally keen to get on, unloaded our bags into the road - which meant they were piled in front of a limo which still had its engine running. No sign of anyone offering to help with them. In the end, I wander into the hotel and duck into the concierge room to get a trolley. It's only as I'm coming out that someone appears - "d'you want a hand?" It's too late by now, though.

The check-in team were very good, but I was already frazzled and probably less gracious than I could have been when presented with a free cookie and free water - 4am start tomorrow, and between the wait for the shuttle and the fruitless wait for help with the bags we'd already burned through an hour we could have been sleeping.

The room was brilliant, comfy bed, lots of pillows, felt clean and bright. There was a view over the city from the end of the corridor - during the day it'd probably look glorious.

Early start, rushing for the shuttle, call for help with bags. Wait ten minutes. Nothing. Call down. "Oh, there's only one man on today, and he's very busy" - understandably, with only one shuttle every thirty minutes, everybody is going to want to go at the same time.

So, arrival and departure was a bit grotty, and the conveniences you really need in an airport hotel were flops. But the hotel itself and the staff who were at their post were excellent.

Previously, we'd stayed at the Sheraton Gateway at ORD; on balance, I think that one edges over the Doubletree - but wouldn't rule out a return.

[Written for, and submitted to Tripadvisor]

Hotel Review: Chicago Sheraton Gateway Suites

After the shambolic Sheraton Heathrow, the Chicago Airport branch of the same hotel chain was a bit of a faith-restorer.

The shuttle was prompt; the driver friendly. The hotel offers a view across to the city - although this is an airport hotel, you can nip into Chicago proper fairly easily by cab; beware suggestions you should take the shuttle back to the airport and get the train into town - it's cheap, and a great way to see Chicago's guts, but it'll eat a couple of hours out of your day in both directions. If you're hoping to squeeze a day in Chicago out of changing your planes, you'll need a cab in at least one direction.

Clean hotel; friendly staff; a bright, airy feel to the public areas. The rooms are arranged around the edge of an almost-courtyard like atrium, with glass lifts zipping you to your floor and back. There appeared to be ice machines and drinks dispensers on each floor; there was also a really well-stocked little shop, and it's nice to have a little shop.

We didn't stay here long, but I could have happily spent a week.

Hotel Review: Heathrow Sheraton

So, once again I'm falling behind with my hotel reviews.

This is one of two Sheratons for Heathrow; not to be confused with the Skyline Hotel. Perhaps the Skyline is nicer.

To be fair, the hotel isn't wretched, but compared with what other hotels near Heathrow manage - like the Marriott, for example - it falls disappointingly short. The rooms are clean, the bed good. It's the communal areas where things fall down.

There's one kitchen servicing three eating areas, all of which abut each other; each have slightly different menus and there seems a genuine reluctance to allow people to sit in the bar and order from the "cafe" menu, for example. To be honest, nobody would want to sit in the bar anyway - it's dark and noisy and uncomfortable.

You wouldn't really want to sit in the cafe area, either - it calls itself a cafe, but it's just chairs in the recepetion area. It's like sitting in an airport check-in queue, in fact, but since the only other option was the laughably poor and overpriced restaurant proper, that's where we wound up.

I tried to order the only vegetarian dish on the menu; the woman glumly told me I couldn't have it. "We don't do that here. I don't know why it's on the menu."

I see. To be fair, she did tell me there was a different vegetarian pasta available, which I had, and was edible, but the appearance of a non-existent item on the menus, that nobody had even bothered to cross out with a Sharpie, sums up the general feeling of this place: nobody does anything more than they have to. There's no attention to detail; there's no sense of care or pride. That Sheraton allow this to carry on under one of their luxury brands - and charges a luxury price for it - is a blot on their record, I'm afraid.

Chains changed: Carvery crumbles hopes

We've not been to the Toby Carvery for ages and ages, and so visiting this Saturday should have been a treat. And, to be fair, the vegetables were better than ever, but the vegetarian option was a crushing disappointment. The butternut squash crumble used to be a large, delicious ramekin full of vegetables and sauce, topped off with a tasty cheese crumble. It was delicious - a signature dish, in fact.

Now, though, it's been reinvented as half a small squash, served up like a baked potato. Actually, potato skin would be more honest, as most of the flesh has been scooped out - presumably to be used elsewhere. The void is filled with a watery topping, a kind of mushroom soup. But a mushroom soup like you'd get from KwikSave in a basic can, not a thick, creamy delight. And of the crumble? Not a glimpse.

If we go back - and, really, it's an if now - I think I'll save the money and just go with the vegetables option.

Hotel review: Parkhotel Sonnenhof, Oberammergau

First thing: In one of the public rooms, there was a massive wall display given over to blueprints for a massive expansion of the hotel buildings, so it's likely that the hotel will change a lot in the next twelve months or so; it's also possible that the slightly drab feel of the hotel may have been because they were planning to overhaul.

However, as it was in May: it's in a beautiful setting, with views across the river to the main part of town, the church and the mountains. We stayed on the suite on the top floor, which gave us the best views - although the downside was the tiny lift doesn't actually go to the top of the house, which is a bit of a problem.

The suite was actually shaped a bit like a railway carriage, with a one bed-room at one end and the double room at the other; the odd layout meant you had to go through the shower-room to get to the sitting room, which made it a bit redundant for practical use.

The hotel inside was a little bit tired, and the room too could do with a bit of a spruce up. Most disappointing was the boxes and boxes of flowers cascading down the front of the hotel on its website were missing, leaving a 1960s extension to dominate the frontage rather than the promised Bavarian chalet style which had drawn us in.

To be honest, after checking in we'd snuck across the river to ask the hotel there if they had rooms for the rest of the week: they hadn't, so we stayed put. And it wasn't terrible, just basic.

There's no coffee or tea in the rooms - common enough in Germnay - but instead, you could buy a coffee machine cartridge for two Euro. Even this outrageous scalping could be forgiven, though, were it not that the room the machine which turned the cartridges into slightly disappointing cups of coffee was locked at about 10.30pm. With the bar shut, any hope of a hot drink was scuppered until daybreak.

The wi-fi was the most modern aspect of the hotel - every part of the hotel seemed to have a great signal.

If you're security conscious, you'll probably want to give this place a miss: there's a side door open all day and well into the evening which enters into a pool room that's usually empty and leading onto the lift - we didn't have any trouble, but it did leave you feeling a bit uneasy when you head out for the day.

The staff were polite and helpful, but not especially warm; the breakfast was included, but this didn't really constitute an act of generosity.

Still, look out of the window: it's a beautiful place to be.

Hotel review: Staybridge Suites, Cherry Creek, Denver

We came to the Staybridge a couple of days after the first of the two big snows that hit Denver at the turn of the year - a lot of services in the city had been having a difficult time of it in a town that had ground to a halt, but the Staybridge kept going without - as far as we could see - missing a beat.

The suite was basic but very comfortable and in excellent condition - clean, everything working, comfy bed; TVs in both rooms, lots of storage space. (Handy, as it was Christmas, and we ended up with a lot of stuff we hadn't started out with.)

The staff were friendly and very helpful - especially Andrew on the front desk who instantly added all guests to his extended family. The business centre is a little sparse, but the rooms all had wired internet for free so, really, you only needed to pop down to print out the odd document - assuming there were no children playing solitaire on the PCs.

There is a hotel library, but to be honest it seems to consist of little more than books that have been pre-enjoyed and abandoned by guests: abandoned, presumably, in shame. The BridgeMart will contain no surprises for anyone familiar with the 24/7 shopping option in this chain - great for snacks and pop; less useful for satisfying nutritional requirements.There is, however, a Target bang opposite, so if you do require potatoes, cheeses or Taco Bell, you've got that on your doorstep. (There's also two strip clubs on the block, too, although it's not really that sort of neighbourhood.)

The breakfasts are basic - mildly more elaborate than you'd get in a British Holiday Inn Express - but the Sundowners can be quite fun; each evening a themed meet-and-greet; the only slight downside being when there's a mix of free beer and younger guests in the room at the same time.

The free laundry (Boxes of Tide a dollar each) is a great touch when you're having a long stay; there is ample parking - and even with a full-ish hotel and much of the lot under snow and pack ice, there was never any problem parking.

The hotel opens out onto Cherry Creek, on one of its nicest stretches in the neighbourhood. Great for a brisk walk - you won't need to use the small gym inside...

Recommended Restaurant: Beau Jos

Counting down to the next trip to Denver, I'm looking at Beau Jo's Pizza place. They do Colorado Pizzas - the twist being that you get honey to dip the crusts into.

They do a lunch buffet, with a range of pies and salads to pick from, but looking through their website, I'm starting to wonder why I've never had their skillets. Listen to this:

We line the skillet with our signature roasted garlic cream sauce, and then toss in sweet roma tomatoes, artichoke hearts, sliced mushrooms, fire-roasted red peppers and fresh broccoli florets. This masterpiece is then crowned with a three-cheese blend of part-skim low-fat mozzarella, feta and smoked provolone.

The atmosphere is faux-mineshaft - kind of a Coloradian take on British pubs built in the 1980s but with beams and ingelnooks, I suppose - and the pricing is almost ridiculously cheap. A place to go when you're hungry.

They're down to just one branch in Denver, but they're scattered across Colorado.

Hotel Review: Landsdowne Place Boutique & Spa

This review I wrote for TripAdvisor - it does refer to a stay twelve months ago now, so the hotel might have improved somewhat since

There were two factors which made this visit a bit of a pig beyond the hotel's control - it was ridiculously hot, and parking on the seafront was a nightmare.

However, the hotel didn't help. We'd been promised "a deluxe spacious queen size room." We got a fairly basic, tiny room which had been well-designed but finished to the sort of shoddy standards that would shame a 1970s Butlins cabin - the tap in the bathroom had clearly broken free from the basin more than once and was held in place by a hopeful splodge of mastic. The tiles could have been put in my hapless Uncle Ernie. The mirror was on the wall at an angle, and so on.

My requested morning paper didn't arrive.

The lift wasn't working, although we were led through the kitchens to use one at the back of the building - we noticed on the wall a memo dating back to the days when the hotel was part of Trust House Forte chain - a name which hasn't been used since the late 90s.

We had hoped this would have been a bit of a treat, because the hotel looks gorgeous in photos. It's a trick. The staff are very helpful, but they're working under difficult conditions and we quit the place almost as soon as we woke up.

Review: Melia White House, London

This was a quick jaunt down to London for a romantic treat, and the White House provided a lovely backdrop - I suspect the management are hoping the place is jaw-dropping, and on that basis it falls short, but it's tidy, clean and (mostly) well-staffed, although it was a bit surprising to have to wait five minutes for the four members of reception to finish tapping at their keyboards to be acknowledged. To be fair, they did apologise for keeping us waiting.


The lift service is, frankly, bizarre - you tell the system where you're going through a central control panel, which then assigns you a lift. Once you've entered your floor, that's it - there's no way to punch in a different number once it arrives. I suspect the idea is meant to be efficient, to stop several lifts heading for the same floor at the same time, which might make sense in a skyscraper. In a seven story building, it doesn't work - it's slow, glitchy, and created a knot of confused people stood around trying to work out how to get up and down. In fact, going down for breakfast there were so many people stood hoping for a lift to show up on our floor that we decided to go down the stairs instead. We were already on our cereals before the others made it into the breakfast room.

The room was clean, in good condition (some slight damp coming through from the shower, a bit of ripped wallpaper, but nothing seriously wrong) but the bath is very high, very deep and very narrow - wouldn't recommend it for people who have mobility problems, and not for people who like baths. There's a list of relaxing bath salts available, but how relaxing a bath would be if you had to take it on your side, I'm not sure.

We had to fix our TV - we got no picture - the aerial had come out the back. (I'm aware some TA users mark down on this sort of thing.) And why a one hundred quid a night hotel feels it can get away with providing standard Nescafe in the rooms - a drink that bears only a passing relationship with coffee - I'll never understand.

Although just off Marleybone Road, the double glazing keeps the sound out, but not, unfortunately, the noise of the couple in the next room having sex. That didn't last that long - good for us, slightly disappointing for them, I fear.

Breakfast had a wide selection of foods on the buffet, although the scrambled eggs were so liquid as to count as a drink and the range of jams was limited to a choice of two; they served up until 10.30 which is pretty good by UK standards. (This might be a Saturday only time, though.)

All in all, a great stay, and a great location - bang opposite Great Portland Street tube and walking distance of Regents Park and Euston Station.