Rated
Nov 19
•
1 review
•
travel, seattle
• panpacific.com
This is where we stayed on our field trip to Seattle. This is pretty much what the room looked like. We had a view of the space needle from our room on the 10th floor.
The parking valet guys were really nice and talked to us. Both ID and I felt that the lady at the front desk was too practiced, too polite and had lost her humanity in her training. Still she did a good job and made sure we had what we needed, even a copy of the Wall Street Journal delivered in the morning.
We ate at the Seastar restaurant, which is of the calibre of Sushi to Die For in the bay area, or The Harbor in Santa Barbara, only "Northwest trendy". In other words, good food and they damn well know it. The glass bubbles are okay but they have Chihuly lamps that aren't showing in the photo; they were amazing.
Doug, our waiter, has to be the best waiter I have ever met. He did not annoy or interrupt us with "Is everything okay" but watched us to anticipate what we would need. He clearly had the sort of experience in mind that he wanted to provide and the rules of waitership took a second place to that, making interactions friendly, but not familiar, and natural. Watching the waiter watch us was sort of the meta activity of the evening. I had a nice conservative salmon (farm, not wild, but hardly noticeable) and ID chose an interesting trout with hazelnut-rosemary coating that I coveted as soon as it arrived. Seastar has won awards for its wine list, but that was lost on me. ID is a sophisticated world traveler, and he chose a nice Riesling that went well with my salmon. We shared dessert but that was a mistake. Choose dinner or dessert, but not both.
Room accommodations were clean and comfortable (but no chocolate on the pillow like you get at the Hyatt). The 10th floor room was quiet for downtown, good for me since it is hard for me to sleep without three cats taking up a lot of real estate on the bed.
A little disappointing was the $35 valet parking charge per day -- the website said that the parketing was complimentary but of course, I am too much of a lady to quibble about paltry sums under four figures, even when we can't afford it so we ponied up.
Liked best: The view of the space needle right out of our window. It seemed like you could touch it.
But would I go here again? No, despite all the things I like about it. Why is that you ask? See those Japanese-style sliding doors in the picture that separates the bedroom from the bath with the nice deep Jacuzzi tub. They aren't soundproof, not even a little. Neither is there a door on the commode. So...
Liked least: You shouldn't have to take the elevator down 10 floors to the lobby in the middle of the night because you don't want your true love to hear you using the toilet. A lady likes to keep the mystery for as long as she can.
