The Embassy Suites Hotel on North End Avenue in downtown Manhattan is chock full of amenities for a very low price. My family's appraisal of the following features was uniformly high: style, comfort, convenience, service, price. The details:

My twenty year old son, 14 year old daughter, my husband, and I spent four days and three nights at this contemporary large(over 400 rooms)hotel over the first weekend of August, 2005. We paid $229 a night plus tax for all four of us, for a two-room suite with a king and a double which accommodated all four of us. Using my AAA and Hilton Honors memberships, this is a spouse-stay-free rate. The only accommodations elsewhere in Manhattan with better pricing were hostels. Budget hotels such as the Cosmopolitan were asking more per room while offering zero in services. Since we needed two rooms, the Embassy Suites was far and away the best choice economically. I did fairly extensive research with my Fodor's, The New York Times NYC guide, and online reviews, juggling my desire to have a classy NY hotel experience with the need to spend money where it counted, which for us was going to art museums, Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, and eating well.

Still, I would have paid more if there was a compelling reason. However, the Embassy Suites per night price included a breakfast with fresh fruit, good pastries, pancakes, fairly good coffee, custom omelettes, yogurt, cereal, etc. There were enough food choices to keep all four of us happy, and we didn't have to sit at a small table in a crowded setting either, as there was casual seating in the atrium. To clinch the sale, they offered a free happy hour in the late afternoon, although in the end we were too busy to partake. The room had such amenities as a microwave, a mini-bar, TV's in each room, view of the water, USA Today (weekdays), and wetbar in the living room. Downstairs were a gym, a movie theater ($10), restaurants, a convenience store, high-speed Internet access and word processing with printer (fee for high-speed access in the rooms). Basically, none of the hotels in this price range offered anywhere near this many amenities.

We asked for and received a small refrigerator, which was brought promptly and cheerfully at no extra charge. Housekeeping also delivered four extra pillows for under our knees. Everywhere in the hotel the employees were cheerful, competent, and service-oriented. We asked for, but did not receive, a piece of plywood to put under the pull-out sofa to firm it up and make it flat. We were told there was a limited number of these circulating in the hotel but all were currently in use. The pull-out sofa mattress was typically uncomfortable. It might be alright for children up to age 10, or one adult. We ended up putting the mattress on the floor, which was very comfortable, albeit inconvenient to bring it out each night.

The bathroom was spacious, I estimated it to be 8' x 6', with a tub, real marble counter, porcelain sink, sleek updated fixtures, extra-absorbent largish towels (not super large), hair dryer, Bath and Body Works soaps and shampoo, cotton balls and q-tips. No plush terry robes as advertised on website. There was a ventilation shaft in place of a bathroom fan and we could hear our neighbor's voices clearly on two separate occasions. Housekeeping replaced the towels daily even though we took care not to throw them on the floor. It definitely was inconvenient to have all four of us sharing the bathroom, but it was the only major drawback of the suite arrangement. It would have been better if the bathroom was accessed by two doors instead of one.

The bathroom and suite were impeccably clean and odor-free. We did find that one of the sheets on the double bed was ripped significantly. The hand of the sheets was silky. They were luxuriously heavy, and had a white-on-white striped pattern, which was echoed by a white-on-white striped wallpaper. The artwork was contemporary abstract in bright reds, very upbeat. The attractive blond wood furnishings were heftily proportioned. All the lightbulbs in the room were compact fluorescents.

Regarding the breakfast, if you manage to get up early (8 am would be early enough) you were treated to a relatively quiet breakfast. After that, there were lines and shoulder-to-shoulder nudging around the serving station. Also, there weren't any cheese choices or veggies for the omelettes,the only choices being mushrooms, onions, bacon, sausage, and American cheese. Many people would be very satisfied, but I was disappointed not to have tomato and a better cheese.

Valet parking would have been $50/night plus tip. We parked our Ford Taurus wagon on the street for free one night and used a secure parking lot on Murray St. for $42.50/24 hours the other two nights.

One could not stay here and not mention the dramatic architecture. My husband said it looked like a John Portman design since it features a fourteen-story inner atrium bordered by open interior hallways for each floor. (I read that every room has a water view, and it did appear that there were no rooms on the east and north sides of the hotel.) It is not designed by Portman, but by the New York architects, Perkins Eastman. The soaring open space of entry area has a small rectangular reflecting pool flanked by a small lemon yellow wall with large loose brush strokes in red. There's an escalator adding movement to the scene on the opposite side. It's dramatic and stylish Contemporary. Still, there were lots of people, maybe too many for my taste, and I was, sadly, reminded of Disneyworld. Still, I overheard snatches of British English and German and perhaps it was Japanese, so there was that kind of interest.

One must also discuss the location. If you're here for anything other than Wall Street meeting, or intend to spend time in SoHo or TriBeCa, you'll have to travel by cab or subway. Walking, TriBeCa is ten minutes, Soho, twenty. (I estimate...we took far longer than that). It's a ten minute ride by cab at night to Times Square/theater district($14). To Lincoln Center, 15 minutes, $17.00. Subways now cost $2.00 per person but an MTA Metrocard buys 6 rides for $10.00. Look for MTA machines in the subway. Because there were four of us, it was cheaper to use cabs for short rides back to/from TriBeCa or SoHo.

Concierge services were mixed at the hotel. When I needed subway directions, there literally wasn't anyone behind the counter. Once someone came (5 minutes), they were knowledgeable. The subways were better than ever, by the way. The only time we saw sketchy people was after midnight. However, I lived in Manhattan for 11 years, so I'm pretty comfortable with the NYC subways.

The rooms had high-speed Internet access for a fee, so we went to the lobby where they had six computers with free high-speed Internet access and Word, with printing capability. I needed to write and print out a eulogy for my mother's memorial service, the main reason we came to NY. A front desk person came over to tell me it was a new computer set-up and advised me to save my work frequently as the system had not been thoroughly tested. Very proactive of him, contradicting what I said earlier about the front desk people not being available. Although the word processor and printer worked fine on my writing project, when we tried to research music offerings in the city for the evening, the web pages would not completely load and then they crashed. It took my 20 year old son who's great at computers to keep the pages up long enough and get them back fast enough for us to finally get enough information for us to make a decision. Although these six computers were constantly in use, we were able to sit down at one immediately for both projects, and no one was breathing down our necks hoping we would finish up quickly.

All in all, it was a very comfortable hotel where we all got a great night's sleep and started out each day well-fed. The staff was professional and ambiance was 21st Century New York. There were no major annoyances. In the future for only two of us, we'd try for a hotel more uptown, since it was somewhat time-consuming and expensive ($40 for subways, $43 for cabs) to get where we needed to go.

Recommended: Yes