Duration: 5 nights (starting on Sunday)
Room type: King-bed
Price: $239 + tax
It is very conveniently located hotel. Right at the Red Line Kindal Station. Across the Broadway, it is MIT campus. There are numerous good restaurants around (a food court is right at the foot of it), the hotel has a very good restaurant itself.
One important fact is that this is a smoke-free property. So you do not have to worry about smoke smell coming to your non-smoke room (on smoke-free floor or not) via ventilation system of other hotels.
Quick comparison between this one and Mariott Residence Inn at Six Cambridge Center (next block). My friend stayed there. The reason he chosed the Residence Inn vs. this one (he has stayed numerous hotels in the Cambridge area next to MIT through the years):
Residence inn has a home feeling, free internet access at room, a kitchen, sitting area.
Room I stayed: 2310
It has a very comfortable king size bed with good beddings; a sofa and a desk with a movable part extending out to enlarge your working area when needed. The safe is large enough to put both my SMALL lapto and BIG camera plus other stuff in. The small refrigerator definitely is a convenient plus for your milk and fruit.
It is at a cornor (two sides of windows, facing the Charles River, great view). The entire building is a V-shape with many rooms facing the river, all with two sides of windows (i.e., at corners).
WARNING: This room is right behind the elevators, so was noisy (I only noticed the noise in the morning though).
The bathroom was nothing unusual. The sink right next to the entrance door and outside of the bathroom has a beautiful granite top but the counter top area is rather small. However, there is a space (about 1 square meter behind the bathroom door) was simply wasted. They could have used that area to increase the sink counter top area, albeit with added building cost. The towels were plush. The shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion has orangy fragrancel, soothing and relaxing (similar to Hermes Eau D'orange Verte), unlike many other hotels' too strong/unpleasant perform smell. Under the sink, it has a small bench. It has not sufficient towel racks.
The TV image quality was not great.
The drawback is that the internet is NOT free from room, $10/noon-to-noon 24 hours. You will have to take your laptop to the business center/3rd floor to get free access, which was not successful to me either for some reason. There are two computers for guests to use, one was broken at the time of my stay.
