Luxury Hotel Review, including stuff that won't be on TripAdvisor

Having gone to see the Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Winter's Tale on the upper east side of Manhattan, we decided to spend the night at a hotel in the area. This being a special occasion, I selected a hotel called The Mark, right off a lovely part of Madison Avenue and around the corner from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Mark is a place to stay if you are fabulous. You can be fabulously gorgeous, you can be fabulously well dressed, you can be fabulously wealthy. The Mark is a place for all of you. Why? Because everything about this hotel is fabulous. And even for people like me whose fabulousness is not easy to spot with the naked eye, it was a terrific experience.

It was about 10:30 PM when we arrived and we were met streetside by the doorman who took our bag and our car. The lobby, like everything else in the hotel is Designed. The chairs are plush and unusual in shape and shade. The reception desk is small, check-in took seconds and then the desk clerk stepped around the counter to show us to our room. I thought this was a marvelously personal touch.

Our room, which is of the kind called a Seventy-Seven King, is a step above the mere Deluxe King and below what they call a suite. It was what most people would call a suite. A large suite with 2 full rooms with a pocket door separating them and a small kitchen and 2 bathrooms.

Let's go through this in the order in which things struck me. First of all, there are enough closets that you could live there. We don't have nearly enough clothes to fill these closets. There are so many of them that the desk clerk couldn't find the safe. He checked in 3 places and then gave up and told us it was in the room somewhere. There are 4 full depth double wall closets and a walk-in with cubbies enough to fit about 100 pairs of shoes. I'm guessing all told you could hang about 1000 full wardrobes in these closets. There was also a dresser. We had one small rolling bag and felt like we'd packed far too little.

Second, to say the room is designed is an understatement. Let's just note that on the beautiful coffee table in front of the gorgeous, ultra-comfortable velvet couch in the living room is a book of all the designers who participated and all of the things they designed for the hotel. Everything has been thought about and as far as I can tell, created specifically for the hotel.

Next, we're high tech here. There is a universal remote control for all of the lights and shades in both the living room and bedroom. I didn't take the time to really get how it worked, but there were individual controls for everything anyway. There are flat screen TVs in both rooms, though the one in the living room seems significantly too small for the space. The TV has a nice preview page where you can scroll down the channels and get a small picture of what's on at the time as you go along. There's a retractable cord to attach an iPod and a Blu-Ray player for each TV. The climate control is electronic, quiet, accurate, and easy to use. Maybe the best I've ever seen.

The bed is big and comfy and the pillows are numerous and nice. There are flexible reading lights on either side. The chair and ottoman in the bedroom are the same wonderful velvet as the living room couch.

The master bathroom is gorgeous- marble walls, separate tub and stall shower with gleaming chrome fixtures and a heated towel rack. The beautiful double sink is glazed with a kind of porcelain that we've never seen before. It's creamy looking and appears as if it would almost be soft. It's wonderfully smooth to touch. There's a full medicine cabinet (full-size, not full of medicine) behind one side of the mirror, the other side of the mirror has a TV in it with a remote control on the counter. The toilets in both bathrooms are set about an inch too high, and the master seems like it should have a bidet.

The small kitchen has a full-size refrigerator with ice maker, 4 burner cooktop and a microwave. No coffee maker for some reason, and the many cabinets have almost nothing in them, just an small and odd collection of dishes, so bring your own.

So after exploring the room I decided I wanted to go out and get a snack. I called the desk and the guy spent the entire time trying to convince me not to go out. I love the attitude of these luxury hotel employees. Noting that the only thing open nearby was a place called "Hot and Crusty," his voice dripped with scorn, but then he mentioned casually that "we go there," but that I really shouldn't. So adopted scorn from the guest perspective and perfectly acceptable from his own.

Breakfast is served until 11, even on a weekday. We both had omelettes, which are the French rolled style, tender and creamy and great fillings. Good toast too, though the butter was too cold to spread on it. Good strong coffee too. The restaurant has a kind of busy decor but a beautiful huge skylight makes it very pleasant. The lobby bar is very cool-looking and was busy at 11PM.

Checkout was quick and easy. Every single person on the staff seems genuinely pleasant and helpful. This is one of the best hotels I've ever stayed in and would certainly come back if the occasion called for it.