The Fairmont in Washington, DC is billed as a fine luxury hotel. The building is grand. The lobby is beautifully decorated, with elegant touches like fresh flowers and plenty of comfortable seating. There is a small bar that is very conducive to having drinks and actual real, sustained conversations with friends (the key factor is that it is not too loud and does not have a sports-blaring TV constantly on). There are restaurants in the hotel, although I cannot comment on the food because we didn't eat at the hotel. (My guess is the restaurants are over-priced.) So far, it seems like there couldn't possibly be anything to complain about, right? Wrong. The first night we were there we asked for a wake-up call for the next morning and we did not get a wake-up call, because we were there for the very important TEDMED conference, this caused us to miss some of the morning events. After mentioning this omission to the front desk, we received all subsequent wake up calls, which, I must say, were made by real people -- a nice touch in a world that has most calls made and answered by machines. Another problem is that the walls were VERY thin and by that I mean that you can hear EVERYTHING your neighbors are doing/talking about, and I assume that if any of them stopped talking/doing other things long enough, they would easily have heard us, too. (Except that we were basically whispering for this reason.) It is not just within the room that our neighbors' activities could be heard, it was throughout the long hallway. Honestly, much of the noise we heard was pornographic. So, although we were supposedly staying in a luxury hotel, it felt/sounded more like a cheap hotel for indiscriminate meetings. On the plus side, the room was very comfortable. The bed was actually more comfortable than our bed at home (I suppose it had been "broken in"). The absolute best feature of the room is that the desk had TWO chairs, easily accommodating me, my husband, and our laptops. It seems that usually when we travel, who gets the desk is always an issue. It is a shame that such a lovely hotel on the outside has such remarkably good acoustics. And not getting the wake-up call we asked for was an inconvenience, although it could have been a disaster (if we had to go to the airport, for example). The location is excellent. But I must say the price is far too high for what you get.
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