Homewood Suites by Hilton Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Best Room

The one bedroom suite was quiet, clean (except for slightly smelly water in the ice bucket), and big enough for us to spread out (we have a very light sleeper of a daughter, I'm seven and a half months pregnant and have to sleep sitting up with a pile of pillows, and my husband has health issues that make sleep difficult for him). We arrived around 12:30 at night. I was nearly too tired to stand when we checked in, and obviously very pregnant. Check in was fine until I asked for a luggage cart. They didn't know where any were right then, and didn't feel like looking for any, apparently. Knock-off Red Roof Inns have luggage carts. The woman who checked us in said to park in the basement ($12.99) and bring our stuff up that way. Knowing that we had a sleeping toddler, a big cooler, and a lot of odds and ends that had to come up with us, I asked, well, is it faster and easier to bring things in through the lobby doors? No, she assured me, the elevator is closer in parking. Here it's all the way down the hall. Parking was a byzantine nightmare. It's not a lot designed for consumer use, but clearly a parking garage for valet use. You can tell because of the double parking spaces, where people parking on their own would be left parked in but valets can juggle cars, and because of the huge columns everywhere, and because the spaces are way too narrow for people who still have to unload luggage. Many of the more expensive cars were parked across two spaces (of course), to prevent being hit or scratched, so there was literally one space left. That space took us about 15 minutes to find. Then there was the matter of unloading and lugging everything through the 85 degree heat to the distant elevator, sad and sleepy toddler in my arms while my hubby carried way too much. To summarize, parking and then unloading took an additional 45 minutes, when we were already beyond exhausted. Someone should have offered to help us bring up our luggage through the lobby doors, and then I could have put the toddler back to sleep while my husband parked. Would have been much faster. But for whatever reason, they didn't want us to bring our stuff through the lobby. Or they just weren't thinking. I don't know. As often happens, my husband had difficulty sleeping. I called down at 10:30 the next morning to to ask for a delayed/extended check out, and was told that it was impossible by someone who was brusque and clearly in a bad mood. I woke him up so we could be ready to leave on time. On a whim, I called back at 11:30 and asked if it would be OK if we stayed until 1:00, the usual delayed checkout time, and this time was told yes. He went back to sleep for an hour. As I checked out, I explained my disappointment with the lack of luggage carts, the dishonesty about the ease of unloading from the basement parking garage, the fact that no one had volunteered to help at all (for context, I'm pregnant enough now that people volunteer to carry two grocery bags out to the car, a much easier task--I don't take them up on it, but then again, it's not usually past midnight when I go grocery shopping), and that the first person I called about delayed check out had been so rude and had denied it reflexively. The woman behind the desk in the morning was politely very defensive, but not helpful.