{"id":16984,"date":"2010-03-29T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-29T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=16984"},"modified":"2010-03-29T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-29T17:00:00","slug":"hotel-review-hotel-monaco-denver-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/03\/29\/hotel-review-hotel-monaco-denver-colorado.html","title":{"rendered":"Hotel Review: Hotel Monaco (Denver, Colorado)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
Overall<\/strong><\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\nComfort<\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Food<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\nService<\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Convenience<\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\nPrices<\/td>\n\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n

The Hotel Monaco is a Kimpton hotel located in the heart of downtown Denver, at 17th and Champa.\u00a0 Very nicely appointed, and coverted from two older buildings, it maintains Kimpton’s quirky-but-luxurious reputation.\u00a0 Margie and I stayed there overnight on Saturday-Sunday as part of a One Night Vacation enabled by my in-laws (by their watching Katherine).<\/p>\n

Comfort<\/strong>:\u00a0 The hotel itself is reasonably laid out.\u00a0 The large lobby on the ground floor has a lot of well-placed easy chairs and sofas, with books and games and so forth on the shelves. Complementary coffee is served there in the morning, cider and hot chocolate was there in the afternoon for a time, and there’s a wine hour reception in the evenings that included a massage chair and a Wii.<\/p>\n

Our room was on the top (7th) floor, with a nice view across the Colorado National Bank toward the mountains.\u00a0 The bed was comfy and the room was roomy.\u00a0 The bathroom was quite large, to accommodate a 2-person jacuzzi tub at the end of it (though the towel racks and hooks were poorly placed both in terms of the steps to the tub and the shower door).<\/p>\n

The TV was not as easily viewable from the bed as it might have been (had we chosen to watch TV).<\/p>\n

Internet access is $10\/night, wired or wireless.\u00a0 The connection and latency were quite good; Margie was able to fire up City of Heroes with no problems.<\/p>\n

The Hotel Monaco is “pet friendly,” and we saw numerous folks with small dogs.\u00a0 For those who don’t arrive with a pet, you can ask housekeeping to bring you a goldfish bowl.\u00a0 They also have the standard exercise room, a spa, meeting space, etc. and so forth.<\/p>\n

Food<\/strong>:\u00a0 We didn’t eat at the in-house restaurant, Panzano, but the menu looked <\/em>yummy and I’d like to go there some time.<\/p>\n

Convenience<\/strong>: Mixed score here because, face it, driving to any location in downtown Denver means maneuvering around one-way streets and 45-degree angles.\u00a0 Valet parking is available for $28\/night.\u00a0 The hotel is, though, just a block or two from the Light Rail, and only a few blocks from the 16th Street Mall and its free shuttles to major bus hubs and Union Station.<\/p>\n

And that’s the upside to the Hotel Monaco’s convenience; once there, everything in Downtown Denver is an easy walk or shuttle ride, which includes the theater district, LoDo, Coors Field, and zillions of restaurants. The Pepsi Center and Mile High Stadium are either fairly long walks, short taxi rides, or a combo of the Mall Shuttle and Union Station light rail for a few hops.<\/p>\n

Service<\/strong>: The lobby staff were young and friendly, but not very … effective.<\/p>\n

We arrived at 1 p.m. or so, which was before check-in time. They were more than happy to hold our bags while we went out for some lunch and shopping.\u00a0 We got back at 3, which was check-out time, only to be told the room still wasn’t ready.\u00a0 And it wasn’t ready at 4, either, when I got up from a lobby chair to go over and ask (though I was assured the desk clerk would go and check on it).\u00a0 It was finally ready at 4:30, but I only found that out because I went up and asked again<\/em>; nobody had checked, and nobody came over to let us know what was going on.\u00a0 All we got was a mild apology for the wait.\u00a0 Not that sitting in the lobby with my lovely wife reading and playing sudoku was purgatory or something, but it was handled annoyingly.<\/p>\n

Case the second: Sunday morning we tried out the jacuzzi tub.\u00a0 Which didn’t jacuzz.\u00a0 Now, we could have gotten up, gotten dressed, called housekeeping, asked them to come and check on the tub, by which time it would have been getting close to check-out time.\u00a0 Or we could have just enjoyed the tub, sans bubbles.\u00a0 Which we did.\u00a0 But when we mentioned it at checkout, all we got was a mild apology and an inquiry if we’d called down with the problem.<\/p>\n

I’m not saying in either case that I was expecting someone to fall on their sword, but a more heartfelt apology would have been welcome.\u00a0 A comped drink at Panzano, or a reduced room charge would have earned some serious gold stars.<\/p>\n

The third case was small but telling.\u00a0 As we were (ahem) waiting in the lobby for our room, the hotel manager (I guess) decided that they would celebrate Earth Hour from 3:30-4:30 pm, since at 8:30 it would be “too dark.”\u00a0 So he turned off all the lights in the lobby.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 The wall sconces.\u00a0 The overheads, which were first dimmed, then turned off.\u00a0 We were asked if we were okay with the other lights being off while we were reading, but since the lamps behind us were still lit, we were okay.\u00a0 Then, a few minutes later … someone turned off those lamps.\u00a0 I reached around a minute later and pointedly turned one back on.\u00a0 I overall appreciated the Earth Hour gesture, but it was taken to an inappropriate extreme (the windowless lobby really does get dark) for the folks impacted (i.e., us and others in the lobby).<\/p>\n

Now, again, the staff was all quite friendly and jovial.\u00a0 We had a nice chat with the desk clerk, for example, when we got back from dinner, and when we asked when checkout was, he offered unsolicited that he could put us on late checkout at 2, rather than Noon, which actually worked out well with our brunch the next day.\u00a0 But … little things like the above made it a less-than-sterling service experience.<\/p>\n

Prices<\/strong>:\u00a0 Not cheap.\u00a0 The main rooms are $135-145\/night, but there are usually some deals to be had (there was a $109\/night one being touted in ads while we there).<\/p>\n

Overall<\/strong>:\u00a0 I enjoyed our stay, glitches notwithstanding, and would both recommend the place to others and go back there again myself.\u00a0 In comparison to our similar stay at the Brown Palace<\/a> in November 2008, ago, the room was bigger and nicer, and the service more personable but less effective.<\/p>\n

Hotel Monaco<\/a>, 1717 Champa Street, Denver, CO 80202 – 800.990.1303<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Overall Comfort Food N\/A Service Convenience Prices The Hotel Monaco is a Kimpton hotel located in the heart of downtown Denver, at 17th and Champa.\u00a0 Very nicely appointed, and coverted from two older buildings, it maintains Kimpton’s quirky-but-luxurious reputation.\u00a0 Margie and I stayed there overnight on Saturday-Sunday as part of a One Night Vacation enabled … Continue reading “Hotel Review: Hotel Monaco (Denver, Colorado)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":16977,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/03\/27\/lobby-of-the-hotel-monaco-denver.html","url_meta":{"origin":16984,"position":0},"title":"Lobby of the Hotel Monaco, Denver","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 27-Mar-10 2:34pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Classic, elegant, fun decor. Still waiting for our room to be ready, but treats, games, reading matl in the lobby.","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/03\/27\/lobby-of-the-hotel-monaco-denver.html#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":16980,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/03\/28\/tweets-from-2010-03-28.html","url_meta":{"origin":16984,"position":1},"title":"Tweets from 2010-03-28","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 28-Mar-10 12:30am","format":false,"excerpt":"Today It Starts! (Tomorrow It Ends!) One Night Vacation! The journey begins ... well, when we're done with closet build-out. # Removed last brackets of K's old baby gates and spackled the holes. My little girl is all grown up (ish)! # Wrapping up packing for One Night Vacation -\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~Tweets"","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31119,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/02\/tweets-from-2012-11-02.html","url_meta":{"origin":16984,"position":2},"title":"Tweets from 2012-11-02","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 2-Nov-12 10:45pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It's always sad when the Japanese maple next door loses its leaves, but it makes the happy seed-noshing squirrels on it much more visible. # Having a romantic overnight at the @Kimpton Hotel Monaco #Denver with @MargieKleerup ... glee! #shemustbemine #someenchantedevening #","rel":"","context":"In "~Tweets"","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25780,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/28\/restaurant-review-panzano-denver.html","url_meta":{"origin":16984,"position":3},"title":"Restaurant Review: Panzano, Denver","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 28-Jan-12 11:09am","format":false,"excerpt":"Panzano is located on the ground floor of the building housing the Hotel Monaco, at 17th and Champa. Though we've done romantic weekends at that hotel a couple of times, and it's just a few blocks from my office, we'd never eaten there before.I regret that somewhat now. It's a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":20346,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/02\/28\/adult-sleepover.html","url_meta":{"origin":16984,"position":4},"title":"Adult sleepover","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 28-Feb-11 9:14pm","format":false,"excerpt":"So, given that our master bedroom is currently uninhabitable (due to ceiling scraping), Margie and I are spending a romantic overnight at the Hotel Monaco. And we decided to hit Fogo de Chao for dinner. 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