Absolutely Pathetic. Review on The Park, Delhi

Stayed at the Park Delhi for five days - it was perhaps the worst hotel stay I have ever had.

Checking in itself was such a chore, and this despite the reservations we had made well in advance from their Chennai hotel. An uppity girl at the Reception, after eyeing us as though asking ''what do YOU think you are doing here?'' actually asked us, ''Are you sure you have a reservation here?'' It took me about a minute of convincing her that we did and that a hotel car had picked us up from the airport. Finally she checked her computer and found our reservations.

After checking in, she gave me a key card which was inserted into a recycled tag from the hotel folded and cellotaped messily to form a makeshift holder with my room number scrawled on it. Then very coolly, she turned back to her colleague and resumed her interrupted chat. I was left to my devices to carry all my luggage to my room, which I had to find by myself. I finally managed to get help from the bell desk after waiting for a while.

The room was quite tiny, and there was no fruit or cookies. There was only one bath towel and one of the toilet paper rolls was half-used.

After a hard day's work, I returned to the hotel to find that a wedding party was making its noisy presence felt right in front of the hotel - I was even more surprised that the wedding was actually in the hotel and no one was really bothered whether the noise would affect the guests, least of all the hotel staff.

The noise level in the room was unbelievably high - after the marriage party had left, there was traffic noise, I could hear the cleaning staff chattering among themselves all the while and the lobby phone, which was incessantly ringing for some strange reason, was clearly audible in my room.

The breakfast buffet which came with the room in the aptly-named coffe-shop, The Portico, was quite limited, but it did have the essentials and so was not unbearable. The chef in the buffet was perhaps the high point of the hotel stay - his omelettes were unbeatable! (BAD PUN ALERT!)

The water in the bathroom was another that got me quite riled. While the wash basin had okay water, the bath tub faucet and the shower spewed a yellow-coloured, iron-smelling muck which was bad ground water at its worst. Added to that, the hot water supply was erratic, and in cold Delhi (at least to me, a confirmed Chennaivasi!), it was enough to drive me crazy.

Checking out was relatively painless, but that I guess was because they were glad to get rid of us.

All in all, The Park experience was quite pathetic and I for one am pretty sure I'm never going to stay there again.