First, the good: The room/balcony/pool looks exactly as it's pictured. The room is light and airy, the pool looks as dreamy as the photos (we didn't bring our swimsuits, but it really does look lovely) and the balcony was perfect for enjoying to-go cocktails and people watching.
The not so great: The physical location in the heart of the French Quarter is wonderful based on geography alone. But the fact that there are seemingly no noise ordinances in New Orleans is frustrating. Being on the second floor with a balcony overlooking the street was great — with one massive caveat. Between 5am and 6am, a garbage truck comes through and all of the dumpsters from the Royal Omni hotel mere feet away from our room are emptied in the loudest possible manner. The large metal dumpsters are dragged across the street and emptied into the truck. Early Monday morning this entire process took about 45 minutes and woke both me and my husband up and made it extremely difficult to go back to sleep. We lived in New York City right next to a bridge for years, so we are used to loud noises, but this was on an entirely different level and it really soured the stay for us. Sonder should place noise complaints with the city and if they don't, Sonder should consider putting in some better windows to block the noise. I bought earplugs for our second night and my sleep was improved, but the noise from the garbage truck woke me up (early Tuesday morning it was shorter than on Monday because I suppose the hotel has less garbage after Monday than after Sunday). If we ever return to New Orleans, this experience alone would lead us to book our accommodations somewhere else. Other reviews might have mentioned this but I could never have imagined how disruptive it could have been. I won't make that mistake again.
Having check-in time at 4pm without a nearby place to store your bags if you're early is frustrating to say the least. The closest place was the Jung Hotel, which Sonder does note is about a 15 minute walk away. It cost more to check our bags there than we were told (though at $2/bag instead of $1/bag, that wasn't a big deal). We booked a relatively short trip and the fact that we had to double back to this hotel (in the rain) to get our bags and head back to the quarterto drop them off/get into our airbnb was less than ideal. Sonder should consider having a place for guests to store their bags if they arrive before check in. Or consider having an earlier check-in time.
Some items from the previous guests were left in the bathroom. Given how high the cleaning and other fees are for the room, (it's advertised as $110/night but in reality is $180+/night), we shouldn't have had to remove/throw away the previous guests' loofahs and other bath items.