The hotel was advised by the agency as a budget hotel but with convenient transport interchange. Perhaps this is the biggest plus, which compensated for everything.
The rooms are small, dirty, the hotel is very old.
Inquiring about the desired view from the window, he offered windows to the courtyard or a noisy street, and we agreed to the latter. The view from the window on the second floor (at a height of 15 meters) was, of course, attractive: at the corner of 7th Avenue and w 33rd st opposite the entrances to the sports complex Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station, by the clock on the visor of which we checked the time . Accordingly, the signals of numerous yellow taxis, the screams of tramps and the homeless at the entrance to the station, the whistle of the police and the sirens of the car accompanied us day and night, but we gradually got used to it. The hotel seemed untidy to us, no face control, and from the servants in the first half of the day we saw only exhausted maids, the same exhausted managers at the reception, and an elevator operator at numerous elevators. For more than 90 years, the hotel has seriously "tired" of the guests, but its good location will not allow it to "extinguish" even in decline.
Every other day we rewarded the maids with a $2 tip and they diligently remade our large comfortable beds with a thin fleece blanket (and this is in January! ), cleaned the room, changed towels and added napkins, etc. cosmetic paper for the shower. Since the voltage in the US outlets is lower than ours, my hair dryer brought from RUSSIA worked as an air conditioner, there was no coffee maker in the room, so we used our travel kettle for 250 grams of water, which was boiled through an adapter for more than 20 minutes, phones and photo batteries were charged longer than usual. I got the adapter from a locksmith employee who was accidentally caught in a huge deserted corridor and after handing him 2 dollars, he kindly stole a beautiful second chair from the suite opposite for us. On the windowsill with a beautiful view outside the dirty window, we set up a bar counter, and we had to build a coffee table out of the ironing board, after covering it with a colorful bag instead of a tablecloth, so as not to accidentally stain it. After a slight rearrangement of furniture for convenience, our life in this hotel in winter NEW YORK began to improve. The walls in the room were dirty, the plaster had burst in places, and I really wanted to pick it up so that it fell off. There was a great desire to make cosmetic repairs there: spray-paint the walls, seal the cracks in the windows, replace the sockets, but if it is impossible to change the circumstances, then we decided to change our attitude towards them. Caught on the third day of living a huge cockroach (3 cm long), I carefully threw it into a cosmetic bag and took it to the elevator, sending it on a long journey from the second floor to the 18th floor of PENNSYLVANIA... I think he was grateful to me that we did not crush him .
But the hotel is very well located close to the popular New York outlet stores Macy's and DAFFY's, behind BROADWAY, the Empire State Building, Times Square. But personally, I would recommend some other neat hotel in downtown MANHATTAN with free wi-fi, coffee maker and microwave in the room. In winter, I will not go to NEW YORK anymore: short daylight hours, a gray city without greenery, rain and wind are possible, cold evenings and nights. I am sure that in April-May or September-October I would have liked this trip more. IN THE SUMMER in NEW YORK it is very hot and humid (and in the hotel PENNSYLVANIA air conditioning was not noticed... )
I highly recommend the guide - ORANGE GUIDE THE BEST US CITIES (Lev ARIE) EKSMO Publishing House (although it is very difficult, but useful)
I wish you interesting happy travels and impressions!! ! NEW YORK IS BEAUTIFUL!