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| - My hosts booked me into the Chelsea Hotel. That sounded fine at first, but my heart sank after I read the Yelp reviews. As I checked in late on a Sunday evening, I was expecting to greeted by filth and marauding rats when I entered my room.
Fortunately, my room was spacious, clean and comfortable. No rats! Up on the 21st floor, I had a nice view of something (random Toronto buildings). Basically, everything was A-OK.
However:
The speed of the free WiFi is ridiculously low by current standards. When the network is busy, it can take forever for a web page to load. In the mid-afternoon (when the network isn't busy), I measured a download speed of 0.85 Mbps. The upload speed is -- how should I say this? -- even less generous.
My bathtub filled up to my ankles every time I took a shower; the drain was not working properly. Also, as others have pointed out, there doesn't seem to be a working exhaust fan in the bathrooms. As a result, mirrors get fogged up after every shower. This strikes me as a design error.
Nonetheless, I maintain my A-OK summary rating. For example, the checkin process went flawlessly. No one was grumpy, mean or dismissive toward me.
Estimating the number of people who are staying at this hotel at any given time might make a good google interview question. During the day, there are lines of tour buses that discharge and pick up passengers on the Bay Street side of the building. The breakfast cafeteria area on the ground floor is overrun with hungry people every day when it opens. (I went instead to the Fresh Start cafe on Bay Street, which is only a few steps from the hotel.) There are sometimes queues in the lobby to get close to the the banks of elevators that go up to the guest rooms.
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