West Coast 2012: Seattle - Hotel Max

We stayed in many nice places this our trip through the Okanagan Valley and Cascade Mountains, but my favourite is the ultra funky and artsy Hotel Max, located in our final destination, Seattle.  From the black marquee with hot pink text, the shiny, lacquer-finished scarlet red lobby desk, the contemporary art hung throughout the hotel, to the lobby's water dispenser (flavoured daily with different fresh fruit) and the gumball machine that dispenses large pink gumballs (matching the hotel's signature text colour), everything about this place exudes a chic, hip and fun vibe.

The rooms are small but beautifully decorated with an original painting in every unit.  We chose one of the larger rooms in the hotel that managed to tuck a full bathtub into the tiny washroom.  The tub was long and deep enough for me to fully immerse myself in hot water - heaven after each long, brisk day of walking around outside.  A pillow menu offered you the choice of soft, medium, firm, extra firm, u-neck, body and reading pillows.  Our room came with a nice firm pillow so we didn't bother switching, but in retrospect, I should have tried some of the other ones just for fun.  Something that I've never seen before was the choice of religious reading material, ranging from King James Bible to Torah, Scientology, Koran, Morman, Buddism and more.  This really was an all inclusive establishment.  Instead of the usual spiel on the hanging door cards indicating whether or not you wanted your room made up, the Hotel Max indicators just say "Yep" or "Nope" .. very cool.

But the best part of the hotel for me were the room doors, each adorned with a different black and white photograph.  Each floor seems to be represented by a single photographer and some floors have a clear theme, be it rock bands, street performers, or Paris scenes.  This of course was irresistible to me and I had to make a late night trek up and down the hallways of each floor to see them all.

This turned out to be a great place to stay in Seattle, as it was within walking distance of most of the main attractions like Pike's Market and Pioneer Square and even Broadway.  The room rates were not too bad for such a central location and such a unique hotel.  The only drawback was the overnight parking which was a hefty $33 per night.