Pros
It was on the top floor (of three) and had a deck looking out over part of the city. Internet was fast. On a sunny day looking down the main street to the financial district was fun, I could see the tip of the opera house while I sat and had a cold beer and listened to jazz on the deck in the sun .. kinda nice.
There’s always something a bit nice about a ‘home’ kind of feel … more space .. two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a decent sized lounge with views, and our own kitchen.
Our hosts were really communicative, and friendly … and they let us check in early (like 9am) which was brilliant given we’d done an all nighter on a flight … (thanks guys).
Cons
This place was certainly not my ‘dream penthouse’ at all. For the price I thought it was rough and dirty. I would consider the more pedestrian but at least clean option of a two queen bed suite at the Pullman for slightly less money. The street entrance, foyer, stairs, entrance etc were definitely rougher than I expected.
The bathrooms were nasty. They probably would look OK in a carefully taken photo, but the floors were dirty, dusty and covered in someones trimmed body hair.
The shower pressure was useless, like dribbling. And the ‘laundry’ was horrible. Adrian contacted us to let us know (on the second day of two days), explaining the building management had a pump problem. Doesn’t change the fact that we paid $800 to have showers dribble on us, and step out onto a filthy bathroom floor. Hmmm. A good hotel would be cheaper, and have nice bathrooms with great shower pressure. Carpet was stained, shower fittings had no handles on them and laundry was disgusting.
Neutral
For that much money how about more than 6 coffee pods?
I’ve been a professional painter, and you can’t just give it a quick paint over and leave the place smelling of paint and then leave the painting gear in the laundry tub, and then call it a ‘dream penthouse’. Finish the job properly, clean the place properly, change the name from ‘dream penthouse’ to ‘quite nice apartment’ and lower the price to compete with decent hotels.