Penthouse king suite (26th floor). Bottomline: Excellent firm bed, quiet and efficient a/c, good water temp and pressure, spacious bath, all areas clean.

Details:
The room looked exactly like the hotel site’s photo. I added photos of our room so you can compare. The room had plenty of windows, high ceilings, and is spacious. Breakfast area is in a large well-furnished area with the typical free-breakfast options plus a waffle bar. All staff were very welcoming and professional.

The location is within walking distance of plenty of restaurants, bars, and Reading Market. The city hall subway station is across the street and makes for an easy trip to the Philly sports venues.

General warnings: 1. Selected penthouse because our last stay at this hotel was on 5th floor and the traffic noise made for poor sleep. Even at the top floor, we still heard the ‘speed-racer motorcycles’ until 2:00 am. No fault of hotel. All hotels in this area have this noise issue, 2. The bath sink has a small area to store your things. But, the bath has 2 windows with large sills. We used the sills as convenient storage places.

During my 3 day stay, the staff never greeted me in a friendly manner. I was treated as though I was unreasonable when asking for ice and for housekeeping. My concerns were dismissed and no one seemed to care about their jobs or the level of service they were providing. The breakfast food was barely warm or edible. The linens were raggedy and stained. But the location is very convenient to downtown, convention center, and Reading Terminal.

This hotel was the best price-to-hotel experience value I have ever experienced in a hotel room. I found a shockingly low rate through a travel site. The reviews here were generally positive, so I booked it, even though I almost always book directly through the hotel. I was afraid the deal was too good to be true. It was not. Staying in the Residence Inn was a great experience.

First, the location is ideal. The hotel is across the street from City Hall and within a block of subway stations for both lines. It's a 5-minute walk to JFK Plaza (the Love sculpture), a 5-minute walk to the Reading Terminal Market, a less than 5-minute walk to the restaurants and bars on 13th Street south of Market, and a 10-minute walk to the Independence Hall/Liberty Bell area. There is also a Phlash bus stop two blocks away, and from there you are a quick bus ride to the Old City section east and the museums north/west. It was about 15 minutes on the subway to the sports stadiums in the south part of the city. The hotel is really ideally placed in the city for visitors.

The service was really good. The front desk agents were super nice and super helpful. The workers in the breakfast area were also very nice and helpful.

The hotel itself is very nice. It felt like an old building that had been recently renovated. It's not luxurious, but it's clean, attractive and nicely maintained.

The room itself was a true suite, with a bedroom with a door and a room (where you walk in) that had a living area, a full kitchen (full-size fridge, stove, microwave, etc.), and a table with chairs. There are TVs in both rooms. Everything was clean and well maintained in the room. The bed was comfortable. The water pressure in the shower was good. It was just a really comfortable place to be. The room had one of my favorite features: The bathroom sink was outside of the bathroom door, so one person could use the sink while the other went to the bathroom or took a shower.

Our room came with breakfast, which was open 6:30 to 9:30 a.m. during the week and until 10 a.m. on the weekends. It was a standard hotel buffet (like a Hampton Inn), with fruit, eggs, bacon, yogurt, cereal, milk, bread, etc. Oddly, there were no pastries or anything else dessert-like. My only real complaint about the buffet was that they routinely ran out of a lot of things, regardless of the time we went to breakfast.

The only negative of the whole experience was the bathroom itself. It was clean, but it was more beat up and not as new or nice as the rest of the room. I would not have cared much about that, but the bigger problem is that rather than a curtain or full door for the tub/shower, there was a swinging door that only covered a little more than half of the tub. The first time I showered, the door was not in the perfect position, so the floor was filled with water when I got back. I also don't like showering when half the tub is wide open. The design was just not good. On top of that, the bathroom sink water temperature did not really match the temperature setting. The first night, no matter where we set the faucet, burning hot water came out. We brushed out teeth in the kitchen sink. We did not complain because we were settled and liked our room and did not want to change rooms. So, we just dealt with it.

Again, though, over all, staying at the Residence Inn was an extremely positive experience. If we return to Philadelphia, I would definitely be happy to stay there again if the rate was good.