Enormous, absolutely vast: a Mystery Guest record! I could not quite believe the size of my room — or, I should say, rooms — at The Place Hotel.
The entrance hall alone was equal to some bedrooms that cost this much. I walked through this echoing space across a blond wood floor into a giant lounge/dining room/kitchen.
The ceiling consisted of exposed red-brick arches. There were battleship-grey steel girders between them and huge cast-iron columns like tree trunks breaking up the space between the lounge and the kitchen.
Large windows were cut into metre-thick brick walls overlooking a canal and a vast parking lot next to Piccadilly station. Two red corduroy-covered sofas looked on to a bulbous television (no need to save space with a flat-screen here).
Everything was ... big. I took in the kitchen, which was stocked with a shoulder-height fridge, microwave, oven, a full set of cutlery and crockery, glasses, salt and pepper mills, toasters and drawers full of kitchen utensils.
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Then I walked past a dining table with six chairs into a room with a large double bed and an en suite bathroom with a bathtub. Beyond this, I found myself back in the entrance hall.
A door that I had not noticed earlier opened into an even bigger double bedroom. This one had an en suite shower room. I walked into the lounge and sat on one of the sofas, feeling a little flabbergasted: in all my stays in UK hotel rooms this was by some distance the biggest.
The Place Hotel is well known by business travellers, who have enjoyed the spacious serviced apartments since the hotel opened in 2001 in the London Warehouse.
The seven-storey building dates from the 1840s and measures about 55m x 55m. In the middle there is a giant atrium with a veritable forest of cast-iron columns.
Earlier at the efficient reception — decorated with trendy chandeliers and splashes of vibrant modern art — I had been handed my room key and piece of paper advertising corporate rates and loyalty schemes. But it is not only for business travellers.
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You can stay for a single night and still be treated like a prince. I was upgraded from a one to a two-bedroom apartment — not that I needed all that space.
Compared with the rooms at the trendier nearby Malmaison and ABode hotels, The Place was a palace.
Rather than cook my own supper, I went to the downstairs restaurant-bar, where I ate a large (naturally) chilli con carne, £9.95, and watched business folk tapping at laptops on olive-green and burgundy sofas. Then I returned to my endless rooms.
Because the walls are so thick and because the hotel is away from main streets, the bedroom was quiet. I went to sleep dreaming big dreams and wishing that all hotels were as generous as this.
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The Place Hotel (0161-778 7500, theplacehotel.com), Ducie Street, Manchester M1 2TP. Mystery Guest paid £137 for a one-bedroom apartment.
Room 9 out of 10
Food 6.5
Service 8
Value 8
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Score 7.88
Do you agree with the Guest? Suggest hotels or get in touch: mysteryguest@thetimes.co.uk