April 29th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Indeed, I am again 50 miles from Iuka this evening. The brew will have to sit for another time. I fought strong winds all the way from St. Louis.
This time we holed up in the Hilton Garden Inn in Effingham for about $10 more than the Holiday Inn Express. My Diamond VIP got us a nice upgrade to a two-room nonsmoking suite with two queen beds. Hilton Garden Inns are one of my favorite brands. They are consistently good, and at times the price can be right, like today.
The beds are indeed quite comfortable and sit high. The pillows are soft yet supportive. In the second room is another TV, a desk, hide-a-bed, a chair-and-a-half, and a cabinet with a microwave and a refrigerator. Strangely, the refrigerator has no freezer shelf like is seen in most shall fridges. Of course there is plenty of room for a would-be workout.
The bathroom has everything inside the door, making good use of small space. The shower bar bows out for more room; a lesson perhaps learned from the Holiday Inn Express chain. All the small complementary items are Neutrogena brand, standard for Garden Inns. The hot water was hot immediately.
The air conditioning deserves its own note. A digital thermostat in one room controls the room’s unit which is set into a wall and not hung below the window. The unit blows into ducts in both suite rooms and the bathroom.
The hotel has an indoor pool, and the fitness room features an elliptical, a treadmill, a nautilus, and a weight bench for bicep curls. Both wired and wireless internet access are available, free, and without a registration page. The wireless is working very well. The desk has four AC outlets, plenty for laptop and chargers.
Happy to not have to “go out” and deal with public restaurants, we ordered room service. The food was great: the salads were yummy, meats cooked as ordered, and the desserts were pretty good. The girls didn’t feel like eating the macaroni shells and cheese: their loss, the oversize shells and melted cheese were delicious. Room service was friendly and was able to handle the eight trays we demanded. Later they promptly brought up additional towels.
The lobby sports a small open-air restaurant that looked a little too fancy for family travelers but great for business casual. All Garden Inns that I’ve been to bake their own cookies, a nice touch.
Parking is a little inconvenient; we had to use the cart to move everything into the hotel room and then park the car. On the same street as the Express, there are still a lot of issues with the street improvements.
Everything was clean, and we were impressed with the service and the size and arrangement of the room. One can work/blog while the others sleep. Especially if one is a Hilton HHonors member, the extra $10 is worth it.
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