The Grand Hyatt makes a Grand Impression when you enter the lobby, and I was pleased to be able to check in early (although I did have to wait an hour to do so), but it was not such a Grand Experience after that. There was one irritating aspect after another in the room. For example, the dressers' lower drawers either were fake or were just unopenable. The night table had a fake drawer instead of a real one. There was no safe in the room. The radio had only presets, and none of the presets was NPR, so I couldn't listen to the news in the morning. But the absolute worst was the fact that there were only 4 outlets available in the entire room; two were crammed together at the edge of the desk and two were in the bathroom. Therefore, my roommate and I were unable to both plug in both of our cellphones and laptops to recharge at night because the plugs were so close that they could not accommodate two adapters. We searched the whole room, behind the beds, behind the chairs, behind the desk... but there were no other outlets that we could reach. What a pain! In addition, there was a charge to use the gym, the towels were thin, and the room service dinner was very poor (a really tough piece of monkfish). On the other hand, the dinner did come quickly, as did the extra blanket that I requested (because, of course, there was no extra blanket in the room beyond the very thin one on the bed). I'm sure the management figures that they can get away with this sort of miserable treatment of their patrons because they are in such a choice location, a couple of blocks from the DC Convention Center.
When I return to Washington, I definitely will not stay at this hotel again.
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