I visited The Westin in October 2005 as a gift from my parents for my 21st birthday, they treated myself and my boyfriend to a 5 night stay in a superior room. I'll start by giving you some afcts about the hotel and then i'll give you my experience.

The lifts are a little confusing because some of them do not go all the way up to the top they stop at around the 30th floor, fine if your on those floors, but i was on the 42nd so i had to remember to get in the correct lift (got that wrong a few times too!) The lifts are extremly fast a made me feel a little queezy - i was glad when people got in and out half way to slow it down a little!

The room was fantastic, on the right as you walk in there was a very big mirrored wardrobe with sliding doors and a good supply of hangers. It had a large amount of hanging space and a space at the top for folded clothes, also in there was an iron and ironing board (not that i used them once!) a coffee machine which was free a large mini bar which was very expensive and laser aligned so if you move anything it charges you regardless of whether you actually take it out of not and at around £15 for a tiny pot of nuts we didn't dare open the door! And a small but very useful safe, it was just big enough to fit in our passports spare money and boxes for the jewellery that we purchased when we were out there (you gotta love Tiffany & Co).

Directly infront of the entrance was the bedroom, it was a very big room with stone coloured walls, very tastfully decorated and inkeeping with the rest of the hotel very modern. The bed was probably the biggest bed i have ever slept in, with so many sheets and quilts, most definatly without a doubt the most comfortable hotel bed i have ever slept in and it had a very tall brown leather headboard, next to the bed each size was a bedside table which had a small drawer and a lamp on, opposite the bed was a giant TV bigger than all my TV's at home put together! Attached to the TV was a controller for a nintendo 64, for which you order games through the TV in the same way you order movies. The TV was on a big desk that had an office chair with it, space to plug in your laptop and have access to wireless internet, and a chest of drawers, in the bottom drawer there was a selection of local phone books and a bible. There was a phone on one of the bed side tables and one on the desk along with a list of charges, which was very unclear. We used the phone only a few times to call home and all we did was ask my parents to call us back and put the phone down, so you can imagine our shock when we were presented with a £500 phone bill at the end of the week, when i went down to check this out i was given an itemised bill, basically what they do is as soon as you dial a number they start charging you, they charge all the time your dialling and all the time it takes to connect, then when it connects they charge a hefty connection fee and charge per minute after that, sometimes i'd been charged £15 for dialling 4 numbers then putting it down because i'd realised that i had dialled the wrong number, my advice go down to the lobby use the pay phone - thats what i'll be doing next time! They did remove these charges when i asked them to, so although i was annoyed about getting a bill like that in the first place it wasn't a problem to get it sorted out, but again the staff at reception were a little rude.

The view from the room was amazing we were on the 42nd floor so it was a long way up and we could see down on to a lot of roofs. The Paramount building was at the opposite end of the block and we could see through to Times Square, slightly to the rigt of our hotel was the Empire State building, it was around 10 blocks away but looked an awful lot closer!

We got a free copy of USA Today delivered outside the door eveyday.

As for the rest of the hotel, my boyfriend used the gym once he said it was very small and the equipment was fairly basic although he said it had everything he needed , you have to pay to extra use the gym, its around £10 a day or you can pay £30 for a week, there's also a sauna and treatment room there, we didn't use those so i can't comment on the quality of them although there was a treatment menu in my room and they seemed a little pricey (around £65 for a 50 minute facial)!

Shula's steak house is the hotel restaurant, its very tastfully decorated with lots of baseball memorabilia on the walls, we visited this restaurant for breakfast and it was very high quality and the sevice was excellent, i did feel it was a little expensive we had 2 orange juices a pot of tea, a ham and cheese omlet and home style potatoes and bacon 2 fried eggs and home style potatoes and it was almost £60.

The porters in the hotel were fantastic they were so polite and helpful and they would do anything for you from getting you transport to giving you directions, even down to just chatting to you when your in the queue for a cab on a rainy day!

The room that i had was around £200 a night, although they do have cheaper and more expensive rooms and suites avaliable, they also do a lot of packages where you get the room and theatre tickets, they have spa rooms where you get the room and some in room treatments, and workout rooms where you get gym equipment in the room, there are prices for all of these on the hotel's website but unusually i found you get a better deal if you book through an agent rather than directly.

All in all my stay in this hotel was fantastic, the miserable reception staff did not put me off at all. The hotel was so luxurious and the rest of the staff were so friendly, the location was perfect and i couldn't have wished for a better 21st birthday, thats why i've already booked to go back next September, i really enjoyed New York its a fabolous city and i plan on going back at least once a year and i can't imagine staying at any other hotel, i would highly reccomend this hotel to anyone that wants a little luxury and somewhere to relax after a hard days shopping!