| rev:text
| - We travel to away Saints games and stayed here for the weekend. The hotel was very nice all around. Efficient , friendly staff and genuinely hospitable. The rooms were in good condition and well-maintained.
So were looking forward to returning for a woodworking symposium at the Lawrence Convention Center.
I'd say lots was the same but some of the changes were irritating and so to be fair, the negatives first (ending on a high note).
For the game, a room. For this time, we had a King suite. 19th floor. View okay but not great as advertised but hey, you're not there to sit in the hotel all day, right? :-)
Well I had booked a corner suite but there was a bit of an issue with my profile on SPG and so they were "de-feathering" the room and it was taking forever. So I said, another corner suite was fine. Except it wasn't. It was a suite alright, but in the living area where one would expect a sofa, sitting area and TV, etc? There sat a 4 top dining table with a hole in the middle. Turns out that lots of business travelers like this arrangement for meetings and all the suites below the 11th floor have this.
SO LOOK OUT before you book, people! :-)
But seriously it wasn't a huge deal as they were more than happy to move me. And they did - to a complimentary upgrade King Suite that you could a tech startup in. Very spacious, with dual closets, very nice sitting area with couch and two comfy chairs, two huge picture windows about the size of patio sliders. A vanity area outside the (smallish) bathroom.
About that bathroom. A couple things bug me when I travel. One, is that some downtown hotels don't have a fan/vent in the bathroom, and so the mirror fogs up big time. Not a huge deal and I use the hair dryer so I can see, but really? can't they do something?
The other thing is this: I hate rain shower heads. I'm an old dude, I like my water pressure, not a rain forest gently wafting over me. I want velocity! Hit me with that H20! And yes, I know that we need to conserve water, but I have a seriously great low flow shower head at home and it cost 20 bucks on Amazon. Sheesh!
Another gripe: There were exactly two places to recharge a device in the entire suite, and both were at a side table about 12 feet from the bed (and only halfway across the room)!
Now, between us we have 5 devices to charge including phones. I use mine for my alarm and like it right there. So really, can't we have a retrofit so grown folk can charge their whatsits?
Finally, the elevators. What? How can that be an issue? Well, since our last visit, they installed a software/hardware package that eliminates the buttons inside the elevator. Instead, there is a touch screen at each floor. One selects the destination, and the screen lights up with a large number telling you which elevator.
Which SUCKS. I'm sure they're using some kind of load-management software to optimize elevator use, and I'm sure that the goal is more efficient utilization and less latency. Well it ain't makin' it. You wait and wait and wait. Then sometimes - if you're like me - you forget which elevator you were supposed to take.
I did find that, it seems that if you go press all the screens with your floor and perhaps those above, the software sensed increased demand and sent an elevator quicker. Hacking an elevator. Who'd a thought it?
Now to the good:
The staff were super friendly, warm and helpful. So when I asked, they found a power strip and a 25' orange extension cord and I ran it over to the bed along the wall. Sort of the Clampetts come to city with my cord running all over the room. Nonetheless, we had power to our devices.
The room was otherwise nice and quiet. Did I mention that it was large?
The hotel restaurants are good. Penn Grille is more relaxed overall and Bill's is more of a "joint" but the burgers are great, as are the nachos. The service in both is excellent and the staff are unfailingly friendly - really hospitable the way we mean it here in the south.
The hotel is attached to the Lawrence Convention Center, which was nice as it rained some each day. We made it to the various events high and dry.
I would say that the high point of the hotel is without question the attentiveness, courtesy and genuine friendliness of the hotel staff. Not that fake, I'm polite but really looking down on you courtesy that we've experienced at the Ritz in Chicago (which I reviewed last year).
In fact, if this hotel was sited next to the Ritz, and the price was the same, I'd choose the Westin, hands down. And given that the rooms were less than half that of the Ritz, that's a good indicator of how well we were treated.
My wife tipped the housekeeping lady $300 because she was so nice. What else can I tell you? Stay there.
And Pittsburgh, you are an awesome town. Good people, beautiful views, and a good nightlife too.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)