Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
location, breakfast available, free wine in the evenings |
| Disadvantages: |
noise, can be expensive at some times of year |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
We stayed at this hotel in December 2007 for five nights. Although the price was high because New York in December is just expensive and there's no getting around that, we hoped that it would be worth it.
Unlike many New York Hotels breakfast is served every day in the lobby bar. There is a good selection of pastries, cereals, fresh fruit and bagels that you can toast yourself, with a goodly number of spreads to choose from. There's a plentiful supply of fresh coffee, available throughout the day, which is great when you come back from shopping.
In the evening the same lobby bar serves wine and nibbles on the house, while a pianist plays the piano for you. We took advantage of this several times and it was a welcome break - so often you can feel like you're rushing from room to street and not managing to relax at all in New York, but an hour with a book and a free glass of wine before heading out for dinner did just that.
Our room was more than comfortable. The queen sized bed has plenty of clearance space on each side, leaving room enough for two comfortable chairs. There's a desk along one wall, which ends in a large entertainment centre, complete with cable TV (and the tv is large), a dvd player (you can borrow dvds from the hotel). The alarm clock is also an iPod dock so no need for travel speakers either. If you can get a room facing onto 26th street rather than Park Avenue south you'll have less trouble with noise. The remotely controlled blackout blind was quite handy too!
There's plenty of closet space, an ironing board and iron, as well as six drawers for clothes. The bathroom has some basic toiletries and a hairdryer, and is a decent enough size, especially for us Europeans who tend to have smaller bathrooms at home anyway.
As for location it is perfectly placed for exploring both up and downtown. There's a subway stop three minutes walk north and south, which can whizz you up or down. It's a good spot if you're keen to explore Greenwich and Soho, where hotels can be hard to get.
There is room service available, which we tried one night through sheer tiredness (not to mention the sub-zero temperatures outside!), and found it was completely fine. Perhaps not spectacular, but I've eaten many worse meals in restaurants.
The staff were lovely too - friendly without being overly familiar. Our room was cleaned every day by the time we returned and the doorstaff were always on hand to help flag a taxi.
So was it worth it? Absolutely. We'd go back to the Giraffe in a flash - it's a great little
hotel.
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