As we were desperately looking for a low budget hotel in New York for September 2009, a New York friend told us about The Jane. It sounded too good to be true; a fair price hotel in the West Village, recently opened and nice looking but small rooms.
We were able to book a ‘cabin’ for two persons for 2 weeks.
Arriving at the hotel and seeing our home / cabin for the next two weeks we had the attitude of the positive, still. Okay, it was a very small room with a view on a blind wall and that airco outside was making a lot of noise, but, hey we were in New York.
The first night we were completely wasted from the flight from Amsterdam to New York and slept quite early. We woke up in the middle of the night because of the noise coming out of the bar of the hotel downstairs: music, base drums and people in the hallways making a lot of noise.
A private party, said the man in the lobby. It was fashion week in New York and it had just begun. “Are there parties every night?”, we asked the next day. “Well, not every night,” was the answer, but we could be moved to a room with less noise coming in, on the other side of the hallway. So we did. A room with a view this time and no noisy airco outside. From then on things could only be better.
Did it make any difference changing the rooms? Well maybe a little bit but even trying to sleep with earplugs in, didn’t stop the heavy base drums coming through. A few bad nights later we asked to be moved to a higher floor, further away from the noise. We ended up on the 5th floor.
The fashion week was about to come to an end, so that must have meant quiet nights and a good sleep finally.
Our new neighbour on the 5th floor thought different about this. As soon as he arrived in his cabin (at 5.30 pm) he put his music on and this would continue until 11.30 pm. We tried to talk with him and asked him to put his music down and especially to lower the noise of his base drums. In this way we could watch television and actually hear what was said. But he never even opened his door to talk with us.
And what was going on on this 5th floor? We never figured it out. It seemed to us that most of the residents of this floor were residents in the true sense of the word; we thought they were living there permanently.
A strange bunch they were, too. What was this man doing in the hallway every time I went to the bathroom, even at 3 o’clock in the morning? He sometimes looked to be in a catatonic freeze and stood there for hours on end.
Who was this fat guy making a mess of the bathroom and never saying a word even as he was spoken to? Who lived down our hallway in a cabin full of plastic bags? And where stayed the guy who was always smoking a joint? Coming from Amsterdam we sure do know the smell of it.
True, the people who are working in The Jane are very nice and sympathetic. The rooms, bathrooms and linen are cleaned regularly.
We made the best of our stay in The Jane. New York is fantastic and we had a wonderful time there. But no way we’ll ever return to The Jane.
hotel reviews