travelodgeI spent two weeks liv­ing on the 28th floor of a hotel in Tokyo when I was ten, and ever since then, I have been obsessed with hotels. As you prob­ably know, here at the Wel­ling­tonista, we’re also very fond of free food and drink, so when the Travelodge invited us to for Cock­tails & Canapes, of course we respon­ded enthu­si­ast­ic­ally.

The Travelodge is off Glimer Ter­race, going up and down the Plim­mer Steps. It used to be the Copthorne, but for the past year it’s been part of the (Aus­trali­an) Toga Hos­pit­al­ity. The rooms have all been done up, and then their func­tion areas, and finally Steps Res­taur­ant, so they threw them­selves a shindig to cel­eb­rate.

When we arrived, nav­ig­at­ing a maze of escal­at­ors and lifts up from Lamb­ton Quay, I was moment­ar­ily all atwit­ter with “Wine is NOT a cock­tail, dam­mit!” but then I real­ised that we were drink­ing bub­bly with straw­berry liqueur in it, and that does indeed count, so I retract my tweet. The canapes, mean­while, were deli­cious. Veget­able tem­pura was hot and amaz­ingly crisp, lamb meat­balls super fla­vour­some, the prawns looked good if you like that sort of thing, crostini were plen­ti­ful and the pork belly with apple sauce was a nice idea although it could have been a bit more crackled. And then after speeches, out came dessert canapes – fruit tarts, mini pavlovas and truly excel­lent brownies. It was a great range of food, and there was moun­tains of it, fer­ried around by lovely staff. Based on that, I would have no hes­it­a­tion in recom­mend­ing Steps Res­taur­ant for a func­tion if you are look­ing for a hotel envir­on­ment.

It was a bit weird to be at a party in Wel­ling­ton and not know any­one in the room except for Miss K and Tom, but the staff were extremely wel­com­ing and hos­pit­able. Miss K and I also got a guided tour of the vari­ous con­fer­ence rooms avail­able (the largest seats around 100, theatre style, and the smal­lest 30). These were all clean and fresh-look­ing, but essen­tially gen­er­ic, which is what you would expect from most con­fer­ence rooms, after all. Then we got taken up to the bed­rooms. Ooh la la!

Our first stop was a stand­ard room with a pull-out couch. The bed was king-sized, there was a kit­chenette, and a good-look­ing shower with room for two. No bath (and read­ers of Hubris will be well aware of how much I love hotel baths), but appar­ently there’s one room with a bath on each floor, avail­able as inter­con­nect­ing rooms for fam­il­ies. We then went up a couple of floors to see a deluxe room, which was sim­il­ar except this one had har­bour views for $20 more. The har­bour and streets at night do look pretty but I reck­on you prob­ably would­n’t need the upgrade, because chances are you’re not going to spend much time in your hotel room any­way, and if you do spend a lot of time in bed, you should be con­cen­trat­ing on oth­er things. Like the LCD tele­vi­sion, per­haps. Any­way, the room interi­ors, like the rest of the hotel, won’t win any awards for innov­a­tion of design, but they’re not try­ing to either. I do ques­tion why so many places have peach-col­oured bed cov­ers, but that’s just me.

Accord­ing to their site, it’s $110 to stay tonight. If you’re look­ing for a spa­cious, quiet clean room in the heart of the busi­ness dis­trict, I reck­on the Travelodge could be the place for you.