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.