Hotel, Inn, Motel

Extended Stay America Hotel – Seattle – Everett – Silverlake Area Review

Extended Stay America Hotel – Seattle – Everett – Silverlake Area Review

1431 112th St SE, Everett, WA 98208
(425) 337-1341
Room being evaluated: 217

I have been in hotels and motels that look to be above the norm. They look this way entering and the lobby and front desk areas but as you progress to you assigned room the experience diminishes a bit. You might find your room to be a bit smaller than you expected.

Our stay at Extended Stay, Everett, Washington was all mediocre all the way from front door to our assigned room. What is special is the cost, quite reasonable. Also, our room was rather large and had a near complete kitchen which includes a microwave, refrigerator, stove, sink, cupboards, dishes, and silverware. There are no pots, pans, and cooking utensils like graters, large stirring spoons, etc.

Our room also had a couch that could be turned into a bed. We did use this but had to ask for sheets, pillows and blankets which were provided rather quickly.

The TV was oddly placed between the bed and pull out bed but not facing either direction. I guess all you had to do is rotate the TV to watch it from the bed or the pull out sofa bed.

The closet, if you can call it that, had no coat hangers. The shower was ok but there was no heater in that room, as you some times find at some other hotels. The towels were adequate size for me but you might find them a bit small.

The two separate windows appeared to be double in that they looked to be two windows each with two pains of glass, four total glass. If you want fresh air, you must open both sets of windows. This attention to detail allowed me to guess that they also put in really good wall insulation.  The room did not seem to change temperature when we turned the heater off during our first two days (out of 4) even though the outside air temperature was very close to freezing.  We turned the heater off in the morning when we left and turned it on again when we arrived back at night around 10 pm.

Our room heater/AC unit was in the wall below one of the large windows next to the queen size bed. That heater was the main disappointment for a number of reasons:
There was absolutely no way to set the room temperature easily, accurately, and quickly. There was no thermostat to set a temperature nor was there any room thermometer to view the results.
The device had only a dial for you to set the temperature by guessing. So, you had to keep adjusting the temperature dial until you got a rather good room temperature. I tried to adjust the temperature at least a dozen times and never could get it set correctly.
The heater would cycle between shooting out warm and then cool air. This device was next to the bed so it was quite annoying to experience these temperature swings.
We stayed 4 nights but the third night the heater began to show failure. The last night the unit failed totally to heat. Only the fan choice worked. The outside temperatures at the end of November were below freezing at night and in the low 40’s during the day. The room construction seemed to be fairly good because with no new heat coming into the room, the temperature did not drop all that much.

The workout room within Extended Stay is pathetic, only two exercise devices. I am a member of LA Fitness and found the closest one about 1.27 miles away from our hotel. Each day, I walked to that facility by crossing over the 5 freeway bridge and then walking north along a pedestrian and bicycle path to the gym. That LA Fitness gym was huge and had way more workout devices than my gym in Orange County, Southern California.  I really do recommend LA Fitness in Everett.

Our last night at this hotel turned out to be quite amazing. We were returning from seeing a movie, about ten o-clock at night, and tried to turn into the long private driveway to Extended Stay but the roadway was full of police vehicles and a couple of private cars. I counted at east 15 vehicles blocking that driveway, none were moving.

We parked next door at a business and walked back to talk to a police officer to figure out when we could park our car within the Extended Stay hotel. We were told that they were waiting for a police officer supervisor to arrive as a police vehicle was rammed and that required a higher ranking office to examine the situation. The officer told us his best guess was about midnight. My son moved the car back to the hotel at midnight.

I decided to see if I could find out what this police action and this is a reply:

-Officers located a wanted suspect at the location. Upon contact, the suspect tried fleeing and drove down the sidewalk before colliding with a patrol vehicle.

-Due to the nature of the crime and the dynamics of the arrest, officers created a crime scene so the incident could be investigated. Ultimately, the suspects vehicle was impounded and a patrol car had to be towed.

Summary:  I do recommend this hotel because the price is reasonable and the rooms are quite doable but only if they fix the heater/AC systems for each room.

 

Posted Dec 2, 2019
Updated: December 7, 2019
Updated: December 10, 2019

Apple Farm, San Luis Obispo, California, Room 100 Allegedly Flawed (Update August 2016)

Apple Farm, San Luis Obispo, California, Room 100 Allegedly Flawed (Update August 2016)

In our prior review of this hotel and restaurant we gave this place a pretty good review.  I wish to amend that prior review to warn anyone that room 100 on the ground floor is allegedly flawed and here are some of the reasons:

  • The room is next to the elevator.  This is not a big problem because the engineering and construction seems to have contained the noise level pretty low.  I mention it because it adds to the overall sound deficiencies.  People getting on and off the elevator rise the noise level at times.
  • This room is directly under the main entrance and where you go to register at the main desk. The floors are not carpeted and people make a lot of noise with rolling luggage across the floor, elephant walkers and children jumping around.  You would think the traffic in and out of the main entrance to this hotel would subside later in the night but this is impossible to predict.  Noise is the main complaint.  This room is unacceptably noisy due to this principal factor!
  • This room is next to the pool.  About five steps from the doors to this room leading to the pool and you are in it.  The room has a cute little alcove with two chairs and a small table which is perfect for reading.  The noise from the pool does enter this room.  The pool is posted to be closed at 9 pm but people still will stay in the pool area after that time.
  • A back entrance to this partial basement floor is a long passageway that shares the wall with this room so you have people walking along a shared wall from time to time going too and from the pool area.  This passageway sometimes adds to the room noise.
  • A light switch next to the inside front door turn nothing on or off.  Ideally it should turn on some lamp to help you enter the room.
  • The main light switch for the bathroom is on the far wall from the door.  One must enter the dark room, find the switch which is some times blocked by a hanging towel.  That is another mistake, putting a towel holder just above the light switch.
  • The coffee maker is above the refrigerator by the distance of two drawers.  It rests upon a shelf with no power.  The solution for us was to drag the refrigerator out of the closet a few feet to gain access to the power behind it and rest the coffee maker upon the refrigerator.
  • The bathroom sink has one of those high arching inverted “U” shaped water faucet.  I had to swing this faucet to either side of the wash basin to wash my face.  If I did not do this, I was forced to put my face to one side of the sink getting the top of the sink table wet.  It is typically not a good idea to move water faucets like I did.

Summary:  This room is unacceptable due to the noise.  I do not recommend occupying this room.  This rooms is attractive but the company fails to take note of details.

Apple Farm, San Luis Obispo, California, United States of America

Apple Farm, San Luis Obispo, California, United States of America

Our family loves the Apple Farm Inn located in San Luis Obispo, California.  We have been coming here for years.

Front view of the restaurant to your right and the gift center to your left.
Front view of the restaurant to your right and the gift center to your left. The inn portion requires that you drive into the parking lot behind the buildings you see in this image and enter the hotel behind.

Note: this review is for the hotel and not the motor inn.  We have never stayed at the Apple Farm Trellis Court portion of this property.  We were told that rooms are half the size and only one bed.  They do cost less than the inn.   You are next to the Apple Farm Restaurant.

Apple Farm Trellis Court
This image above shows the Trellis Court portion of the Apple Farm property. Note that the rooms in the court access directly too and from the parking lot. The inn portion of the facility has much larger rooms requiring entry to the main building and each room is off a hallway.
Apple Tree Inn
The Apple Tree Inn is the hotel which we review in this post. The inn sits behind the gift shop and restaurant. You need to drive into the parking lot beside the gift shop to view the inn shown in the image above.

What we like about the Apple Farm Inn:

  • Its location is very good.  It is right off the 101 highway.  You can walk about 20 minutes down Monterrey Street to get to the downtown. There is also a trolley that costs 50 cents one way and stops right in front of this hotel.  There are other restaurants that are not too far away you can walk too.  Caution:  When coming up from the south on the 101 make sure you take the correct off ramp, Monterrey.  We failed once to do this once and because this hotel is at the north extreme of town and where the 101 enters a canyon, there were no roads to turn around for quite a few miles.
  • Rooms are really cute, spacious, clean, comfortable, quiet and not too expensive.  The room air conditioner is very good.  You can set a temperature for the room and we have not found any past AC units to be noisy.  The windows can also be opened for fresh air.  Every room has a gas fireplace which, by the way, does heat up the room.
Room-323
Room 323. Note that the Apple Farm is conducting renovations so this room may look different in the future.
  • Parking is convenient and easy to navigate.
  • There is a very good restaurant on the property.  The menu, service, and ambiance is good.  The food we had here was better than places we ate in town. We noticed that food dishes now have a way higher quality.  The cooks really are doing an excellent job.
  • There is also a gift shop that is quite large.
  • They also sell bakery items for sale.
  • You will get 2 very large chocolate chip cookies when you check in.
  • You get complimentary wine each night (one glass per person) from 3 pm to 7 pm.
  • Each room has two 10 fl oz of Martinelli’s Apple Juice.  Two 500 ml purified waters are provided.  Coffee for the coffee maker is also in the bathroom with the coffee maker.  We use the coffee maker to make tea.  Tea bags of various flavors are offered near the front desk along with small packets of honey.
  • A free local newspaper, the San Luis Obispo Tribune, is just outside your door each morning.
  • Look carefully in the basket holding the juice as you will find some chocolate kisses.
  • In the closet are two rather thick terry cloth bathrobe you can use during your stay.
  • Free WiFi.
  • There is a heated pool and hot tub.
  • Each night from 3:30 pm to 5 pm they feature a different local winery for a wine tasting.  They also offer some simple snacks along with the wine.
  • The hotel lobby rotates different drinks depending upon what part of the day it is.  Morning you can find coffee with cream and sugar.  Evening you may find tea and coffee.

What we do not like:

  • When we make tea in our room and use tap water we noticed large particle floaties.  This typically means the water is not that pure.  The Apple Farm provides two 500 ml free purified drinking water each day for each room.  We use that water and purified water we bring from home to make our tea.  It would be nice for San Luis Obispo to do a better job of filtering their water.

2015 Monterey Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
info@applefarm.com
Phone: 1-800-255-2040 or 805-544-2040
Web site: http://www.applefarm.com/

I would like to thank Gustavo who works at the Apple Farm front desk for proofing the content of this post (April 3, 2015).

August 2016 update for one hotel room #100:  Room 100 Allegedly Flawed

July 7, 2017 update:  The Apple Farm offers a $5 dining credit with their Green Apple Program.  I do not recommend it.  We put the door knob placard out and found that nothing had been done to our room  We did not get apple juice, nor water, nor new towels, nor fresh sheets, etc.  The placard appears to tell room service not to enter to do anything!

Room 209 has a few minor flaws.  The commode does not properly flush.   The activation handle needs to be raised upward after pushing down to activate the flush.  If you fail to do this it never stops flushing, thus wasting lots of water.

The second mistake is the electrical wiring in the bathroom.  The light switch over the sink also turns on the vent over the shower and tub.  The second switch illuminates near the tub only.  The tub light should be married to the exhaust vent.

When I come to this hotel, many of the rooms have sink faucet handles that turn the wrong way, quite odd.

I did not enjoy the guest wine tasting reception held every night, July 7, 2017.  They moved this event to the Garden Room.  This is a much smaller space and lacks enough tables.  I like to bring my study materials such as books or laptop and writing materials and place them on a table to conduct work while drinking their free wine.  The Garden Room was way too small and lacked enough tables in their patio area.

Need Advice For Visiting First Part Of Tip: Amsterdam?

Need Advice For Visiting First Part Of Tip: Amsterdam?

A group of 8 adults will be visiting Amsterdam, May 2014.  We need hotel, restaurant, and points of interest ideas in Amsterdam.  We would love to stay 4 days in a hotel by a canal.  We need 4 rooms.  If you have a recommendation to make, please share with us.  Send an e-mail to captain.mclaren@gmail.com

We plan on sharing our reviews of everything about the trip including travel, hotel, restaurant, and places we visit and make reviews in this web site.

Following is what we have discovered so far during the planning for this trip (End of November 2013):

  • Flights into Amsterdam typically arrive early in the morning.  Hotel rooms do not offer up their rooms until about 3pm.  Hotels charge about $40 to $50 for early book in.  Our AAA travel agent said that this is a money maker for the hotels.  My daughter came up with this solution.  Because we need 4 rooms, only pay for one room early book in and everyone store luggage and freshen up during the early hours using this single room.
  • Tip from my son: Use Firefox browser and go to File > New Private Window.  This method should keep the web site booking companies form seeing your interest in any particular hotel and raising the rates if you visit a page frequently.
  • Our top recommended trip web sites for Amsterdam:
    • Booking.com.   I just love the Amsterdam map with all the hotel pins.  I can zoom in and out.  When I pass my computer mouse over any map pin, I get a quick look at price.   We want to stay in the “Canal Belt”, 16 and 17th century waterways and Booking.com worked for me:
      • Singel
      • Herengracht
      • Keizersgracht
      • Prinsengracht
    • Kayak.com does a good job of presenting all your choices.
  • After using a good web site search and finding your top three or more hotel picks, then go to the hotel web sites directly and see if you can get any better deals.  In the United States, this almost always works but we have never been to Europe before.  Here are the  reasons why we like to compare web vacation web sites and hotel web sites.  The booking web site has to make a profit.  Some times the rooms are located in less desirable locations.  Some times the hotel can offer better prices, secret offers or perks.  My daughter discovered that some hotels give better rates for AAA, senior citizens and advanced purchase by visiting the hotel web sites directly.  When you go to any hotel web site examine it carefully as some money saving promotions are another page or two away from the home page.
  • We have been very impressed with AAA travel agents.  We have booked our flights and tour in November 2013.
  • Look into getting a credit card with an imbedded chip and rewards.  AAA is not offering a Visa card with some pretty nifty rewards.  Europe is not credit card magnetic strip friendly.  We applied and got accepted for AAA Member Reward Visa cards.  The rub is that you must ask for the chip.  We had to ask Bank of America for the chip after we received the cards without it; quite annoying.
Harbor View Inn, Santa Barbara, California

Harbor View Inn, Santa Barbara, California

This is an upscale inn that is situated along the coast city of Santa Barbara in a most strategic location.  It begins at one corner with its wonderful restaurant, Eladio’s across from the Stearns Wharf.  The wharf extends the most singular important street, State Street, right into the ocean and then ends with restaurant and shops that rest on the top of that wood pier.  The begining of Stearns Wharf, a significant tourist attraction, for all of its eating places, shops and view, intersects a street that runs parallel with the ocean called Cabrillo Boulevard.  Harbor View Inn rests on the corner of State Street and Cabrillo Boulevard.  The traffic at this intersection is quite heavy with vehicles that come down State Street and must T on to Cabrillo Boulevard.  It takes up almost a large full square block.

The rooms inside the inn are very nice. Our room had a wonderful sitting area, deep marble top desk, huge dresser and good size closet.  The bathroom was excellent.  As you entered a door that can be locked, there is a very large counter, large mirror with hair dryer and amenities such as the obligatory shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, bathing soap, bar of soap, box of tissues,