HotelChatter

The Property
The Houstonian is on an 18-acre property that sits in the Galleria-ish area of the city. The Manor House — which was, apparently, the former residence of President George Bush (Senior) — is now the hotel's restaurant and sits near the hotel part of the compound (can we say compound? Sure, it's Texas) and The Houstonian Club, a private health club, and Trellis Spa (where we got a fab manicure) are both accessible by short walks on nice little paths.

The lobby of the place is decorated with rich, warm colors and dark finishes (reminiscent of a wealthy Texas gentleman's over-the-top mansion, we think) and the public areas of the resort are adorned with paintings and sculptures of, er, Texas wildlife. Oh, and there's a big ol' chandelier in the lobby that appears to be made out of antlers.

Check-In
Amazingly, we rolled into the lobby post-bachelorette-party and were able to check into our room at 9:30 a.m. When we sat down to work at 9:45, however, a housekeeping manager walked into our room without knocking or anything — she was just doing her rounds and didn't get the memo that someone had been checked in. Since it was 9:45 in the morning and check-in wasn't officially until 4:00, we think this is totally forgivable.

Room Reaction
Ohhh, the views! Well, sorta: we walked into the room and were greeted by a floor to ceiling window that looked out onto a heavily-wooded area. Some metallic gauze-y curtains were actually draped over the windows, which gave an awesome look to the trees outside the window in the afternoon sunlight.

The room had dark finishes, a gigantic flat-screen television and not a whole lot of light (the number of lamps in there are deceptive; it's difficult to get that room to look bright, especially since all the trees outside the window don't allow for a lot of sunlight to come in). It was... nice. Not spectacular. Kinda like our rich old aunt's guestroom.

What We Liked
We're somewhat simple creatures, and we thoroughly enjoyed the fact that there were two buttons next to the lightswitch at the front of the room: one said "housekeeping" and one said "do not disturb"; pressing those buttons illuminated a little light underneath our room number in the hallway — we didn't need to open the door in our skivvies to hang a sign on the door or anything.

The linens were comfortable and not too scratchy, and there was puh-lenty of desk space between the beds where we could work.

What We Didn't Like
This is silly, but we weren't nuts about the fact that the alarm clock was on the far side of the room — only we had control over the iHome, which sort of pissed off our roommate when we slept through the post-wedding wakeup time we'd set.

And, like we said, the room was pretty dark; there were a bajillion lamps to turn on, and we still couldn't get the room to feel bright. Also, the two of us in the room ended up with approximately six keys after our two-night stay because our keys stopped working — the key cards were sort of fussy and were very, very easily deactivated next to our cell phones, it seemed.

WiFi
Free. Not very fast, but free.

Bottom Line
We were pleased with the service and the property overall; the recently-renovated rooms (2008) were modern and updated, but still kept that classic rich-ol'-Texas look that we were expecting from, well, an "urban resort" in Houston. Rates start around $259.00.