The Waldorf Astoria

Fancy hotel that somewhat recently had a beautiful renovation. The hotel has that 5-star fine hotel look and aura that’s a little too formal and boring for my taste. The service was 5 stars in some areas and 3 stars at best in other areas. The deluxe room we were upgraded to as a Diamond member is gorgeous as seen in the photos. Although there were some fabric stains on the carpet and desk chair and someone else’s hair within the see through bag of slippers I never used. Front desk was extremely professional and polite. Our Bellhop, a giant teddy bear like young looking guy, was also very friendly and professional. We encountered a nice woman at the concierge, who was pretty useless to us. She emailed us some Jerusalem tours, but they had to be booked 24 hours in advance. We were able to find a highly rated Jerusalem tour online ourselves that was much less expensive and we booked it only about 12 hours in advance. The only tours she showed us for the Dead Sea... were private and very expensive, and we were able to find reasonably-priced group tours on our own online. Went to have a drink last night at the bar area and it wasn’t busy at all. Nevertheless it took almost ten minutes for the bartender to finally acknowledge us sitting on a sofa by the bar and take our drink order. However, the hot chocolate, especially the whipped cream, we ordered was very good and almost worth the wait. The breakfast buffet is pretty high quality with many options. You can also order from a choice of four items off the menu as well. Yesterday I ordered the eggs Benedict with smoked salmon, which was good except the bread was a bit burnt for my taste. This morning we ordered the French toast and omelette, which were nothing special, but good. It took a while to flag down a staff member to order these breakfast items then another twenty or thirty minutes for the omelette to arrive at our table, and after a few more minutes I flagged down an older gentleman with a mustache and suit to check where the French Toast was and he said it was coming in a grumpy manner without any apology or explanation. It also looked like we weren’t the only ones complaining about the breakfast items taking too long. Perhaps they can use an extra pair of hands in the kitchen at Breakfast, and the manager would be in a better mood. We checked out today and received a 3pm late check out because of our Hilton Honors Diamond status, which was great. Overall I would rate the hotel an my experience a 3.5, but since TripAdvisor does not allow this, I am rounding my rating up to 4 stars.