3-3-05: Westin, Times Sq, New York

This hotel gets the coveted 5 mooses. The decor is modern/hip and the service is excellent Location is excellent. The best meal value on the in-room dining menu is the pizza, only $18 bucks. Other high points: the in room desk has plenty of electrical outlets, good room lighting, the windows actually open, great views, very quiet, the heavenly bed, and so forth.

I guess my only gripes are that 1) you need to pay $10/day to use the health club and 2) the elevators have TV (CNN) playing in them. I happened to be there the day they let Martha Stewart out of jail and I was forced to listen to that drivel. At least the elevators are fast. Price is a bit steep - $287/night + tax., but I'll definitely stay here again if work is paying.

2-10-05 to 2-18-05: Club Med: Cancun, Mexico

In a nutshell, I wouldn't go back to this club med, but it's a near miss. The resort's location is the BEST in Cancun. It has several fantastic beaches, including a national underwater park with excellent snorkeling, and abutts an inland salt water lagoon. The food included in their all inclusive rate is excellent.

I think the reason I wouldn't return boilts down to the age of the physical plant and the staff.

The hotel is pretty old and it shows, and unfortunately smells. Apparently, this club med was the first resort property developed in Cancun but it really hasn't been kept up that well. The rooms - and this is reported by other guests - smell like brine. Ok - let's not pull any punches - they smell like urine. It's not constant, and the smell doesn't come from the toilet, but its pretty oppressive at night.

The room furnishings are ancient, especially the beds. I like hard/firm beds but this was the hardest bed I've slept on in a hotel, anywhere, and I slept like shit for the entire week.

In addition, the air-conditioning in the room sucked. It was noisy and wouldn't cool. Adjusting the themostat had no effect on room temperature. It was so noisy, I had to wear ear-plugs every night to get to sleep. And even though we has a private porch and a sliding door, there were no screens for any of the rooms, so you had to sleep with the window closed to avoid being eaten alive by malarial mosquitos.

The water in the resort was also undrinkable. Well it was drinkable, but it tasted like shit, so you were better off with bottled water. This was available from bottled water machines (the hotel gave you a bottle) but there were only a few water dispensers available across the entire resort and these tended to be empty frequently. We have a tap based water filter in our house. This isn't rocket science, and I don't see why Club Med hasn't switched over to it yet. Guests wouldn't have to rely on the staff to change the bottles and they could get water whenever they wanted.

And while most of the staff, particularly the native Mexican staff, were very nice - I was shocked a number of times at how nasty and unwelcoming some of the Club med G.O's were. I had a number of jarring experiences where some punk treated my wife and I like shit. These incidents were few and far between, on the whole, but I left the club thinking that the G.O.'s were like frat boys and girls, in charge, rather than business people. I keep telling myself that can't be, but you really got the sense that adult supervision was lacking.

On the more positive side, my wife and I had good time where we were able to try new activities, as well as have lazy days and we had a great excursion to the coba/tulum mayan ruins. In addition, we had a positive first club med experience, eating every meal with different guests from all over, and establishing some pleasant relationships. That part of the vacation was unexpected but nice and something that I'd encourage travelers to try at another Club med resort. In addition, we were pleased by the demographics of the guests, particularly by age. There were a lot of middle aged and older guests to counter the more rambunctious disco frat crowd. I imagine that this swings back toward the college crowd around spring break time, but when we were at the club, it was a good mix of young and old, european, canadian and us, and english and non-english speakers.

1-14-05: Westin SFO

This hotel gets a 4.5 mooses rating. I'd definitely stay here again when I need to be close to SFO. Very nice rooms, the heavenly bed, nice furniture and color schemes, lots of power outlets near the desk, internet access (fee-based), great sound-proofing on the windows. The food was good. The hotel is not much to look at from the outside, but the inside is comfortable.

The hotel has an indoor 20 yard pool with lap lanes and I managed to get a good 2000+ yard workout in it. It's rather heavily chlorinated however, and the chlorine irritated my lungs a bit. Still, no one uses the pool (in the winter) and it's atreasure. I had it all to myself. There is also a small but reasonably well equipped fitness room with weights, medicine balls, and a variety of cardio machines. Not a lot, but they did have an upright bike. (It needs adjustment, but was serviceable). I had a good sweat.

The in-room bar has a very poor selection of beers and wine, but there is an in-room coffee maker. A fluffy bathrobe is supplied for lounging around after a shower or covering up on the way to/from the pool. One downside if that overnight guests need to pay $14/night for parking. That's a rip-off IMHO. You can get around this by dropping off your car early and taking the hotel shuttle back the evening before your departure. In fact, I'd advise this because the train from the rental area to the gates is rather slow.

1-13-05: Marriot, Santa Clara, CA

I hate Robin Hood Green. Can you imagine a Mexican themed resort where the rooms are Robin Hood green? Clashing decor is the theme throughout this hotel. The rooms are typical Marriott. I had the double bed option and had virtually no florr space as a result. I literally had to move the desk chair out of the way to get from one end of the room to another.

A really nice lap pool, but it's outdoors only and it's fucking 50 degress outside. Hard to swim laps without getting hypothermia. The health club is small but I got to hand it to them: it's jam packed with good equipment - lot's of cardio machines (probably 20) with built in headphone tvs, free weights and the right kind of serious weight machines including a gravitron thingy. I was pretty impressed and had a good workout. Too bad the pool wasn't covered.

The main restaurant, called Parcel 104, is way too expensive. The entrees don't even have prices, and by the time I arrived, the only seating available was at the bar. Instead I ate at their sport's bar, named Characters, which thankfully had the sound turned off on all of the tv sets. The beer selection is pretty limited. the waiter told me that Gordon Biersch was a lager - but it ain't. Anyway the dish to order is the seared tuna. It's awesome and won't kill you like the Nachos (which i ordered too!). The room service menu is way too limited.

All in all, I wouldn't stay here again. The only reason I did was because the Westin next door was booked full.

1-11-05: Westin O’Hare, Chicago, IL.

Big. This place is big. Too big. The furniture is kind of old though. I can’t tell if my headboard and ottoman are white naugehyde or white leather, which would be a little too kinky for a Westin. The heavenly bed is of course heavenly, but the rest of the room is kind of shabby. The rug needs to be cleaned or replaced. I’m not going to sit in that cubist velveteen easy chair. A cat probably sat is in it once and I’ll start to itch. The granny smith they gave me at the desk was mushy. I hate mushy apples, and I had to work to wash off the wax on is. They need to supply “Nice” brand fruit and vegetable wash in the rooms. You have to pay for their cruddy internet access. That’s passé these days. They have wireless in the restaurant – why not upstairs? Plus the room had like no electrical outlets, so I had to plug my laptop into the one by the window and then stretch the Ethernet cable across the room to the laptop, and then plug my cell phone charger into the outlet by the bathroom. Duh – people need to be able to reach all of this shit from the desk.

I slept pretty well however, I must admit. The soundproofing is really good in my room even though I overlooked an interstate exchange. I was impressed. That kind of shit really bugs me. They have Starbucks coffee in the in-room coffee maker, and it tasted a hell of a lot better than the shit that room service brought up in my $18 continental breakfast. Christ, how can a bowl of raisin bran Total, a glass of OJ and a small carafe of coffee cost $18? The cost of food at this hotel was just extortionist: $4 dollars for a bottle of water, $6 for a bottle of beer in the room, $10 for a glass of just so, so merlot and $35 for a filet mignon.

The health club was pretty good for a business hotel. Lots of weight machines in decent condition – which I avoid and a basic set of free weights, treadmills, bikes, and ellipticals. They also had medicine balls and an ez bar. Hooah! I got a couple of sets of skullcrushers and French curls in and I worked up a pretty good sweat. No blaring TV set. Got to bring your own headset so you can watch sitcoms piped into the exercise equipment. But if you need to watch the drivel on TV when you work out, you’ll probably like the free USA today. Do people still actually read this stupid paper? I should have stole that WSJ I saw in front of that guy’s room. The pool is a fucking joke. It’s like a square 15’ x 15’ with a Westin logo painted on the bottom. Why bother? What peeves me is that the elevator photos of the pool show lap lanes. False advertising.

Couple of other little gripes. The light switches on the lamps were really hard to find in the dark. Not all of the electrical outlets worked in the room. There was no floor towel that you could step onto when you got out of the shower. I got charged for drinking a Heiniken in my online bar even though I had a different brand. This is just slander. If I submit an expense report with a Heiniken on it, I’ll lose face in the office. I should sue these guys for slander. On the plus side - The mini fridge senses when you take a bottle out of the fridge and bills you automatically – creepy, but good for a fast checkout.

To conclude: The Westin O’Hare is so, so – the high points were the online mini fridge, the medicine balls and the ez bar. Stay somewhere else. Room rate was $189 not including taxes.

12-25-04: Doubletree @ MIT, Cambridge, MA

What an awesome hotel. I didn’t stay here, but my folks did when they visited me over Christmas and their room was so nice, the family hung out there for two days. First off, you wouldn’t know this is a Doubletree because it’s heavily customized with an MIT identity. For example, all of the sconces (lights) in the hall ways have circuit diagrams sand blasted into them. There are framed patents behind the main desk and a Rodney Brooks robot on display in the lobby. There’s a big library on the first floor named after Norbert Weiner and these great pictures of Louis Kahn and his drafting team in the hallways. The elevators have this cool atomic theme going on with the rug and walls inlays. And so on.

My folks had this great suite, located over the @ sign on the outside of the hotel, that had a living room – including a conference table, couch, easy chairs, desk, aero chair!, dresser, bedroom, bath, and giant atrium. Hanging out with a lot of family members was really comfortable. Internet access was free, so we could all take breaks for a little surfing.

The hotel has a decent exercise room with treadmills and bikes, and a really nice outdoor garden above ground level. The attached restaurant is also really good. I had a delicious and substantial poached salmon salad for lunch. They have pots of loose tea and a good breakfast buffet. Best yet – attached to the hotel is a Star Market, so you can shop for flowers or food next door without going outside! Pretty cool.

The hotel is located south of Central Square, just off Mass Ave and just north of MIT. If I were traveling to Boston – I’d definitely stay here.