St. Stephen Vacations from $689

A nice hotel and nice rooms very good location. There's no bar or lounge in the hotel, but the 1540 restaurant was large and bright, and the food was good. The bathroom was odd in that there was no place to put any toiletries, no shelf or cabinet of any kind and the mirror was not above the sink. It was on the wall to the left. The only trash can in the entire suite was in the bathroom. And it was very small.

My husband and I have stayed in two other Relais and Chateaux properties (Hotel Wailea in Maui and Chatham Inn in Cape Cod) and both were stunning in terms of hotel grounds, cleanliness, room and hotel decor and staff helpfulness and service. For each of our three stays we were celebrating special occasions and all locations personalized our birthday and anniversary occasions with champagne and a personal note. Planters Inn sent a piece of coconut cake for my 66th birthday which was delicious and much appreciated. The downfall of Planters Inn is that room #226 had stains on a couple of the chairs and on the carpet. There was someone else's hair on the bathroom floor when we arrived which is a pet peeve of mine, especially at a highly rated hotel. The bathroom itself contained a plastic tub/shower instead of a walk-in shower. The mattress on the bed was old and unsupportive which did not lend to a good night's sleep and the "night stand" was so far away from the bed I had to sit up to reach my phone or turn the light off and on. What was worst of all was getting awakened at 6:30 in the morning to the sounds of trash thunking in the dumpster outside our window. It was in very poor taste for the hotel management not to have told us about the renovation going on which would have allowed us to make an informed decision about whether to book the hotel or not. We loved the city, the people, the food and the history but we will NEVER return to this hotel.