Our room was pretty, the Mariscal neighborhood location excellent. The hotel has lovely murals on the walls, nice details such as tropical flowers in the rooms. Hot water not completely reliable in the afternoons due to low water pressure. Taking a bath would have been impossible due to giant, rectangular bath tub. The cafe is cute and has reasonable food, but it's definitely not the cool hangout it was billed as. Coffee was terrible--I ended up going out each morning in search of real coffee.

We went to this hotel as it got a good write up in some travel guides. We arrived to find that we had a poor room which had limited head space. The cost of the room was quoted as $89 but on leaving the staff tried to increase it by 12%. Generally in South America you start getting cable television and bar fridges for this price. None of this hotels rooms have TV or Fridges. The water in the shower was at best luke warm,

In another review on this sight someone commented that the staff seem to see it as their duty to relieve you of money and to treat you like a dumb tourist. This certainly was the impression we got. The rips off include:
1. A charge of $10 for a safety deposit box free in every other hotel in South America.
2. A fee of $10 if you want to leave your luggage for a couple of hours. Free in every other hotel in South America.
3. Internett at $5 an hour five times the going rate.
4. Laundry at a piece rate which works out at 10 times the going rate.
5. The resteraunt sells glasses of Black Cat wine at $5.60. The going rate for a bottle in the local supermarket is around $4.00

Of course if a hotel is okay you don´t mind paying a bit more. If the food is good, if the service is attentive. However if things are poor these things grate.

The resteraunt sells a limited range of "European" dishes which are about the quality of a work canteen. The food sells for about the double the price of far better resteraunts dotted about Quito. However the impression is amateurville. The resteraunt does not use proper glasses. It uses very thick glass goblets which were fashionable in the 60´s and are very poor to drink wine out of. In retrospect this was probably a deliberate ploy because they tend to sell cheap whine at overinflated prices which has often been kept to long. When we went there they sold us warm beer and some food which had been clearly re-heated. When I refused the warm beer there was no apology for a significant lapse in an expensive resteraunt just sulking.

The hotel tries to pass itself of as a rather literary place. (No doubt to cover the fact that it is to cheap to get cable television.) As a result there are numbers of cheap romance books and westerns spread about in the rooms and common room. However the lighting in the rooms and the public facilities makes reading close to impossible.

In conclusion there are better places. In fact almost all places are better.

While travelling in Ecuador with my family we stayed at the Cafe Cultura. We had stayed int he Patio Andaluz in Quito previously, which I would recommend, and I was hoping this would be of the same high standard. There are nice thigns about this hotel, but overall I felt it had the feel of a nice youth hostel, rather than a classy boutique hotel.

Good things:
- the restaurant! The food was really good, breakfast included, and the staff were charming and helpful.
- The lounge area with log fire and comfortable leather sofas
- Some of the rooms
- Unusual decoration (might not be to everyone's taste)

Bad things:
- Some of the rooms. We were in 24 (i think!) which was on the 3rd floor. Most of the rooms on the 3rd floor were rubbish. My parents had one and I peeked in the rest while they were being cleaned. It felt very much like the floor had been squeezed ino the attic space, but there wasn't actually enough room to do so. Our bed was under the eaves, which were glassed in, dirty and not curtained. It was really noisy and in my parents room there were windows onto their bathroom which looked onto a main road, without any curtains provided. My sisters were out at the front of the hotel in an even noisier room, which was also fairly small. Peeking in some of the other rooms while they were cleaned they looked ok, but ours were seriously below standard.
- Low quality furnishings (eg tables, bedspreads)
- Noise
- Showers

Overall I would recommend this to a younger market, but it wasn't of the quality my parents expected. There were nice things about it, but if you are going there, make sure you request a decent room and ask to change if it's not up to scratch, because some of them looked lovely.

Stayed 4 nights over the course of 2 weeks in Ecuador, was supposed to stay a 5th but they had overbooked.

Room2: due to the overbooking, they upgraded us to a suite the first 2nights-- large bed room, small hallway that led to bathroom and sitting room w/ windows on 3 sides. Found this room to have a cold temperature and have street noise.

Room 6: for 2nd 2 nights, very small ( decided we would pretend it was the bedroom of someone's house, but felt cell like), but this room was warmer and quieter. Peeked into other rooms on same landing after morning checkout and they were larger.

Both rooms had weak lighting in bathroom.

Overall: very unique hotel, loved the murals, wooden floors, fireplaces and library is a cozy place to relax in evening. Good breakfasts. Staff friendly and accomodating. No problems w/ storing luggage. If you want a unique, quirky place to stay, try it here, if you like a standard hotel experience you would probably be happier elsewhere.,