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| - I got a pretty good deal here on some travel site or other, and with that I launched into a city I knew absolutely nothing about.
This was a couple of years ago now, and I'm not cool enough to have had any sort of smartphone then - no urban exploring with Yelp apps or anything else to help me out. So the fantastic location, I quickly found out, is really helpful. Wandering blindly around this strange new place--my first time to Canada, at that--was a pure joy because I was able to figure things out pretty easily. I love the cold weather so a trip up in January was not a problem, but it did probably give me a skewed idea of how walkable the area is.
The rooms and the lobby aren't too cheesy - but you might get a sense of it being a little dated. It's charming despite that, though - there's an elegance there that reminds me of some of my other favorite places. The room was beautiful, and we had none of the problems other people have described.
And I should mention the staff. They were amazingly sweet. Everyone was profoundly polite, not just to me and my (now) wife, but to the other guests, as far as I could tell with my more-or-less constant eavesdropping. It was also a whole lot of fun to try out my French, which seemed well-appreciated by the staff. It's also worth mentioning that the valets, doormen and concierge were all totally clutch in my non-iPhone world, grabbing cabs in the crazy cold wind, recommending breakfast places, giving us local pointers. I'd return in a heartbeat.
Really, I've been looking forward to it since I left - didn't have nearly enough time to see everything I wanted to.
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