Vintage Tino
Fairmont Hotel, San Jose First in a series of hotel reviews I hope to do.

The other night, I was walked from my regular home away from home, the Residence Inn in Sunnyvale. They put me up in the Fairmont, in downtown San Jose.

The standard room at the Fairmont goes for $400, and it might be worth it, if you’re into that kind of thing. The room is comfortable, and there’s one of those little guys to put your suit on while you’re not wearing it so it doesn’t get wrinkled. There are telephones everywhere. My room even had a power strip under the desk, so I could actually plug in all my gadgets at once. The fancy hi-tech Marriott on Great America in Santa Clara doesn’t even have that.

There’s a TV in the bathroom, but it only gets broadcast channels. The bathroom has a separate shower and bathtub, a touch I always like. (You can just see part of the shower in the mirror in the picture there.) The soaps are fancy French ones shaped like honeycombs. There are robes with the hotel’s crest on them, and a separate dressing area with a big mirror and a hair dryer.

All in all, the room I stayed in was not as nice as the standard room at The Venetian in Las Vegas, but it was pretty good for Silicon Valley. It’s probably not worth the money, though, if you’re not going to take advantage of all the features of the hotel — there are several restaurants, lounges, a big lobby with sofas, etc.

Also, if you’re not doing your thing in downtown San Jose, traffic getting to and from the hotel at rush hour is, as you’d expect, horrible. I don’t do anything in downtown San Jose, so it’s not really good for me.

The bed was comfortable, though. (An alarming number of hotel beds aren’t. I once stayed in a Motel 6 (or some such place) with, I kid you not, a three-inch-thick pad of foam rubber on top of the mattress. It was only with some effort that I was able to begin moving again in the morning.) While the Fairmont does insist on using those horrible plastic blankets, the kind you’d never, ever use in your own home — at least if you’re the kind of person who stays in $400 hotel rooms at all often — they at least provide two sheets for the thing, so it doesn’t come in contact with your skin (much).

Ultimately, I’ll give the Fairmont, San Jose, three Tinos out of five for having the comfortable bed and the power strip. They get nothing for the bathroom TV because of poor reception, and the location is a wash — it’s great, but unless you’re doing something within walking distance, it’s ultimately a hindrance.

Posted by tino at 20:08 17.11.00