Intime City is a destination in Hangzhou, with the high rise Citadines Hotel as its nearby neighbor. ||||My suite was quite large with a comfortable king-sized bed, a working area, and a kitchen/dining area. The kitchen area has a refrigerator and stove-top cooking, and comes with pots and pans, dishes, and Western silverware. I could easily imagine staying there for a week, sort of halfway between Extended Stay America and Residence Inn. The WiFi was a bit flaky, requiring frequent logins, but overall it worked well. ||||But there's considerable room for improvement. As in the US, the hotel is pretty much a single language operation. You can't expect that the hotel staff will speak any language other than Mandarin fluently. Make sure that your mobile phone has a good translator app and that you know how to use it. ||||The hotel's breakfast selection is OK for the hotel's price range, and there's also a fitness center and a launderette. ||||In four nights there, my sheets were not changed and the bottom sheet had a couple of holes. Perhaps they change the sheets weekly. Fortunately, they were much better with bathroom towels, changing them daily if you left your towels in the tub or on the floor.||||If you look carefully in the lower level of the adjacent shopping mall, you will find the upscale BLT Supermarket. There you can find many Western items at high, but not extreme, prices. For Westerners staying more that a couple of days, I strongly recommend going here for some additional items - I brought cereal with me from home, and bought low-fat milk, bananas, and...
Read moreCitadines at Intime City was the perfect housing solution for my 2-month stay in Hangzhou. The hotel was very clean. Housekeeping was twice a week, which worked out very well for me. I was impressed how functional the Studio Deluxe design was. There were closets and drawers to store all my things so I could keep my space clear of clutter. No problem plugging my US devices to their outlet options. The couch, breakfast table, and desk offered me a variety of options for setting up my laptop for work. The WiFi is slow, and it's my only complaint. The kitchen had all the basic tools for simple cooking projects; the in-room laundry machine completes the feeling of a normal home life. The mall next door provided plenty of restaurants and a premium supermarket. There are plenty of fruit shops nearby. Steps away are beautiful, quiet walking paths along a canal. Metro (Sanba stop on Line 2) is about a 15-min walk.||||The staff members were wonderful and so knowledgeble. They helped with setting up rides, locating shops, and setting up Apps on my Chinese phone. Not knowing the Chinese language, life would have been very difficult without their help.||||I really enjoyed my stay at Citadines, and the staff (desk and housekeeping) in many ways (big and small) made me feel at home. They also arranged an activity (movie, weekend tour) every month so residents had a chance to socialize with each other. ||||This was my first stay with Citadines, and I have to say I now prefer this style of housing over the standard...
Read moreIt was very hard to get to the front door of the hotel to unload baggage as everything is barricaded around their corner entrance. So our driver circled around and we were finally dropped off at the underground parking where we came up through their lifts by the service entrance. It was certainly not a grand entrance.||||We booked a two-bedroom apartment which was nicely positioned at the corner. However not long after we had entered our room, a loud voice boomed from the room next door and we could hear the entire conversation of this man. When I complained and asked to change room, I was rudely informed that I should book the room next door if I wanted to have no noise!||||At my insistence, he did begrudgingly change us and it became clear to me that this is a low-budget, no service, no frills place. And the sound insulation is a major problem if you can hear everything from the room next door. It's got really cheap construction and we could hear all the external sounds too and in particular the cars honking to get out of the mall parking lot at night. ||||Finally the cleanliness was not acceptable. There was still debris in the toilet! I suppose the only thing acceptable...
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