So our hotel, the Galt House, has two towers. Last year Lisa and I called them the swanky tower and the tacky tower, due to their renovated and unrenovated states, respectively. This year I asked for high speed net access in the room, thinking that this would get us into a suite in the swanky tower like last time. It turns out that the renovations have continued over the last year. Now there are renovated rooms in the tacky tower with net access, which is what we got. It's probably for the best financially that we didn't get one of those huge suites. The room is fine, with a spectacular view. The only real problem is that we were expecting a fridge so we brought a lot of perishable food. No big deal though; we're keeping the cooler full of ice and nothing has spoiled.
Well, also the wireless access is spotty at best. We found one sweet spot in the middle of the room where we only get intermitted outages, and set up the laptop on a luggage rack. Anyplace else in the room (on the bed, at the desk, whatever) and the connection dropped constantly. The downtime to uptime ratio was about 4:1. It's kind of pathetic and I would have asked to change rooms because of it, if I weren't too busy with the art car event. Besides, the hotel is pretty full, with several conventions (including a huge street rod show), and it might be hard for them to find us another room.
Speaking of which, I must say I'm disappointed with the service at the hotel this time. The first problem was when they assigned us a room that was already occupied. We opened the door and someone else's stuff was all over the place. All I can say is, the hotel is lucky we're honest. We had to go all the way back down, with our luggage of course, go back to the front desk and get a different room. What mainly put me off was how blase the desk clerk was about the whole thing. She acted like it was nothing out of the ordinary for a guest to be given keys to someone else's room. It kind of spooked me and I've been careful to hide everything valuable (like this computer) every time we leave the room.
Then there was the wireless problem, which is basically resolved as long as I stay in the sweet spot in the middle of the room, and as long as I'm patient about the downtimes. And then today we got no housekeeping service. So in general, not too happy with the service. Still, the room is nice, and it's great that it's so close to the event.
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