Necessary Roughness

I stayed for a week at the Holiday Inn Express at West Road and Beltway 8 in Houston.

The room was cramped to start with, and the two double beds made it nearly impossible to get any sit-ups done. The beds were sufficiently firm, with the standard choice of firm and soft pillows. The desk had plenty of outlets to power laptops and charge accessories. Internet access was inconvenient; several days I had to log in with the provided password more than once to get a connection.

The fitness room had an elliptical, two treadmills, a recumbent bike, and a small nautilus. The elliptical functioned, but there was no place to set an iPod or phone. A good flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall. The TV had a good channel selection.

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For the past week I stayed at the Holiday Inn Houston-Westchase in Houston, TX.

My room had good space, but it was somewhat squandered by a two-level desk?/table? and a corner couch with an ottoman. A smaller desk and a normal couch/hide-a-bed would have given more room for working.  The floor sounded like it might have carried some foot noise to other rooms, but nobody complained.

The bed was high but very soft, almost uncomfortably so. Standard firm and soft pillows were provided. The CFL light bulbs in the lamps were only halfway obscured by the lampshades and hard to look at. The air conditioner functioned very well.

Television provided plenty of variety, loaded with ESPN channels, HBO, and several Spanish stations. A small microwave and half-height refrigerator were available.

Six outlets are available at the desk: two in the desk lamp and four in the wall. The outlets in the wall were misaligned with the hardware behind it, necessitating significant force to plug something in. Internet service was free on both wire and wireless.  Wire speed was terrific, but the wireless was very slow. The hotel would ask for the password upon every reconnect, which was annoying.

The bathroom was quite large, big enough so that the mirror never fogged from the shower. The toilet handle had to be mashed down in order to function properly. The sink was well designed. The faucet quietly emptied into a bowl that rose several inches above the rest of the counter top.

I didn’t get a chance to check out laundry service or their restaurant, but I did visit their fitness room, which contained a recombinant bike, an elliptical, and two treadmills.  The bike and elliptical had their own mini-TV, and the treadmills shared a larger one.  There were no weights or nautilus.

Entrance and egress out of the hotel were a bit tricky, as it rested at the intersection of two divided streets.

HAL gets $99 a night here, which is a little pricier than their deal with the Hilton-Westchase property. The hotel is fairly new, but I will likely not come back to this one.