Garden Avenue Hotel Shanghai

Not impressed

Positives: Good room size for 1 or 2 persons; Cheap rate for casual travelers; High speed internet access in the room; The hotel is located in a less busy street only two blocks from the South Railway Station (convenient if you take trains from this station). Negatives: Old and dirty carpet. It is located in a peripheral of Shanghai and you need to take bus to downtown. Extremely stiff bed (harder than many other hotels). The most strange and stupid thing is, at around 4:00 in the afternoon, someone always comes to the room to check (they call it room round). The first day, the lady said: Just check to see if the guest has come. The second day, she came with a bunch of soap trays in her hands, looking into the bathroom and said: I want to see if your bathroom has a tray like that. The third day, she came again saying: I want to check if the room has been cleaned up. Sometimes, they enter the room without knocking on the door! The check out is extremely slow. Sometimes two of them work together for about half an hour for such a simple job. I asked them whether they had any speed checkout procedure so that a guest can leave quicker. Never heard of it was the reply.

Traveler's tip on dining

There are two restaurants in the hotel. One downstairs has a western name and serves buffet style western food. The price is reasonable, but the tablecloths are dirty (they do not change them often), and most of the food is cold (so are the faces of their waiters). The one on the third floor is a Chinese restaurant. It is clean with very good food. However, you can not charge the bill to your room. It only takes cash or credit cards.