This week our roaming correspondent, Monica Guy, is giving us the low-down on the Chilean Hotel Scene. Here she encounters una vista mal. Enjoy.
Lucky Lorie and Paul Bennett, who found a killer view staring at them out of the window of the businessy Park Plaza Hotel in Santiago, Chile.
We on the other hand spent the night in the Radisson Plaza Santiago Hotel, a similar 160-room 5-star mega-hotel in Santiago's business district.
In their information about the local area, they forgot to mention they're backed right onto a mega-building site which actually seems to create 100 times more dust and noise and pollution than buildings.
If you're lucky, you'll be on the other side of the building, which faces a blank tower block.
How miserable. You're in one of the hottest capitals in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, you have to work (presumably you're here on business, or you wouldn't be staying at the Radisson) and to top it all off, the view out of your hotel window is enough to make you want to top yourself off.
The hotel is fine - standard business-hotel affair, with a piano player tinkling away in the small bar, a small swimming pool and a well-equipped gym on the top floor (at least you can see over the top of the building site) and all the usual knobs and whistles of a Radisson.
Service is sloooooow, and we couldn't get WiFi to work, but apart from that you'll get pretty much what you expect.
Rates are standard business hotel rates, with a bit taken off for Latin America. If you can't pass the bill on to your boss without looking at it, don't bother staying here.
We are suckers for a room with a killer view. We find that we are even more likely to forgive some minor hotel inconveniences if we can stare out the window at something pretty--yeah we are that shallow. Let's help out our fellow hotel mavens by uploading rooms with killer views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. We will feature our favorites in this space from time to time. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number of the hot view.
Visit the web site for the Park Plaza Hotel in Santiago, Chile, and you get the impression that this is a sedate 104-room city business hotel, featuring the standard amenities and typical international furnishings. But look out the window of your room and...wow!
This photo comes to us from travel writers and photographers Lorie and Paul Bennett. They say the hotel has a certain look of "dowdy elegance" and rooms are on the small size, but you can't beat the snow-dusted mountain views from the Andes-facing rooms and the 15th-floor solarium pool.
Maybe W should change the whole whatever, whenever thing to include wherever. Seriously, W's are beginning to pop up all over the globe. Is that a good thing? Well, either way, in 2008,W Hotels will open their first South American property in Chile.
Aside from the over-hyped Whatever/Whenever service (they always neglect to tell you that they will charge you for this service), the W Hotel Santiago will also have an open terrace restaurant, nightclub, and signature Bliss spa.
Sounds like the 205-room hotel will give some guests reasons to hide in their room during their visit to the Chilean capital. But considering the ideal location on Avenida Isidoro Goyenechea, Santiago's inspiring backdrop, and the nearby ski slopes and beaches, guests should be motivated to actually leave the heavenly confines the W will provide, at least for an hour or two.
This continues W's worldwide expansion that will eventually include: Barcelona, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and of course, our favorite hotel whore, Dubai.
In our opinion Amazing Race jumped the shark this season. It would be easy to point to Rob & Amber as the sole reason for the shows downfall, however, we think it has as much to do with the rest of the cast as with Rob & Amber. This season just isn't clicking.
Our opinion aside, we have a job to do--report on Amazing Race hotels, so plod on we will.
This week's race ended at Cerro Santa Lucia in Santiago Chile. That place looked beautiful, did it not? Spanish fountains, castle like architecture, what's not to like? Well, you might be surprised to learn that many recent Cerro Santa Lucia visitors over on Virtual Tourist reiterate this advice: Don't go to Cerro Santa Lucia after dark.
Apparently, Santiago's landmark hill has some crime issues. Bummer. Our solution would be to camp out in the best part of Providencia, away from the Cerro Santa Lucia, at the Hotel Orly.
Recent visitors to the Orly rave about its cleanliness and friendliness, two things that we hope rubs off on the Amazing Race cast if they stay here.
One recent guest said:
I am, to say the least, a high maintenance guest who NEEDS things a certain way. Hotel Orly has the panache of any world class bo[u]tique hotel to accomodate guests like me.
See, Hotel Orly is probably the only hotel in all of Chile that could put up with this Amazing Race cast for a night.
Maybe W should change the whole whatever, whenever thing to include wherever. Seriously, W's are beginning to pop up all over the globe. Is that a good thing? Well, either way, in 2008,
