"Oh, I'm sorry..you see, my native language is French.." [sweet, apologetic smile]

"Oh, that's interesting, so is that how you'd say it in French?"

"Hmm, actually, we'd pronounce it as 'Ah-zelle'."

"Really? Nice.."

I got there at 3am, so the hotel was all quiet. The lobby was much narrower than I expected from the website photos, but otherwise I found pretty much everything beautiful, a bit grandiose actually, but very much to my delight--I love old stuff, and would very much prefer to be in an old-fashioned hotel than a posh, modern one. They brought my luggage up to my room and got there before I did because I got lost in the maze of halls [I was just tired, mom, I swear...].

I stayed at Room 280, which was a basic room with all I needed and a bit more. I had to give it to them--everything there was well-thought out--what can I say, they've been in the hotel business long enough to know a bottle of expensive Evian will be opened no matter how overpriced it is simply because most guests will be too tired to go look for cheap water (in my case, I had nowhere to buy it from at 3am and I was too tired to even try after 20+ hours on planes). At least the tea was complimentary--and really good.

I was glad I arrived when it was still dark and there was a bit of time to sleep. I thought that would help with the jet lag. But I never figured out their alarm clock, so I was waking up every hour until I decided it was time to get up and get ready for the conference I was attending. [So maybe if you stay there and figure out how the alarm works, you can tell me.] So needless to say, the jet lag did get me, and the world kept spinning beneath me for like the whole day, and the elevator trips made it really worse.

It is a really old hotel, but still very nice. What was nicer was that it is connected to the city's PATH system and you can get pretty much everything you need within easy access in the numerous shops in this underground complex---without needing your winter coat. Pretty cool.