Room Mate Grace - Times Square

Some think that to stay in the big city, you need to sacrifice something. Be it comfort or space or privacy or price, something always goes. My next destination may have something to say about that. Our travels next took us to New York City just east of Times Square at Room Mate Grace Hotels.

Room Mate Grace is one of the more recent additions to the hotel market in Manhattan and they promise to do things just a little bit different. Creative, multicultural, charismatic the 139 guest rooms range from petite to premium. Room Mate Grace has an attached lounge and bar, individual heat and air conditioning controls, fitness equipment, breakfast service until noon, and so much more. Hidden around the corner from Times Square, Room Mate Grace tout themselves as an undiscovered gem. Proximity and amenities are one thing but how about the beds? How is one supposed to get a good night's sleep in a place where there's so much to do? Let's head on inside Room Mate Grace and see if this is somewhere that you should sleep here now.

Room Mate Grace has a full breakfast buffet and it's on a fairly extended schedule. Breakfast is served from 7am until noon. That means that the late arrivals from work or play don't need to be up and out by 9am to get the breakfast enjoyment they seek. Breakfast was a generous spread of meats, hard boiled eggs, granola, cereal, muffins, breads, fruit, juice, and coffee. The seating on the second floor with breakfast was a little challenging but turnover was swift enough and people sat generally without issue.

One problem we did have at Room Mate Grace was very sporadic and choppy internet signals. Both my wife and I kept getting kicked off and we even called tech support and flushed out our DNS it was to no avail. While New York City is full of wireless networks, Room Mate Grace may wish to consider upgrading their internet service and figuring a way that everyone is able to get online everywhere. We were only in one room for one night though so we may have just been unlucky for that night.

Another thing which isn't so much a problem as it's just something to be wary of is the setup of our room made it difficult for bathroom privacy. Imagining the room as a rectangle, the sink was large and generous along the side wall while the shower and toilet were all the way towards the front of the room; directly adjacent our bed; as though they were ''¹..."in the closet' of the room. However the sink light and the shower and toilet light were on one switch. When I woke up and showered my wife usually would have been able to sleep. Because I had to turn the light on though, she was not able to continue sleeping. While this wasn't a huge issue, if you're traveling with someone and one or the other of you takes a long time at night or for midnight bathroom run, that is something to be wary of in the room style we were in.

Still, the rest of the nights sleep was undisturbed, which there is something to be said for in Times Square. The Room Mate Hotels ideology was founded on the principal that people all need to be able to enjoy their time spent; as though they were spending the night with a close friend. Room Mate Grace in Times Square is a wonderfully inventive and clean lined space which has plenty of clever uses of space and so much of whatever you want from the world just outside your door. Some people may be apprehensive about staying somewhere like New York City; thinking that Manhattan is too busy for their style of living. However the Room Mate Grace rooms are clean, quiet, comfortable, spacious, and private giving guests the comforts they seek.

Sources:

www.room-matehotels.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/SleepHereNow?feature=mhee#p/u/6/PJd9hlfSddc