Rating
"Groovy hotel" The most striking thing about the Windsor Palace is the really faithful adherence to modern architecture --- for the 1970's. The style is not distracting at all, though. Our room was very modern, very clean, very pleasant. That 70's style only really shows in the bathroom (ceiling and shower), but that room was also super clean as well and well maintained. Despite the obvious groovy age of the hotel, the building and staff are entirely good and we did not have any issues with our standard room, which we had reserved for Revillion (New Years) 2007. For New Years (and Carnival, another big moneymaker for the city) the hotel required prepayment up front (this turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise as the U.S. dollar weakened somewhat between when they charged me and when I stayed). The hotel also offered a ~ $150 USD per person dinner for New Years Eve, but surprisingly, it was not a mandatory dinner (as would be the case at, say, a resort hotel). In contrast, hotels on the beach were absolutely scalping the tourists. The Marriott on Copacabana beach had two different Revillion dinners. One on the 2nd floor cost ~$500 USD per person and the one on the roof of the building was $1000-something(!!). My wife and I ended up getting room service, the price of which was very reasonable (as you should find it to be). I did stop by the restaurant while they were prepping for the big dinner and they were setting up some extravagant displays of carved fruit and the musician was tuning up. If you go up to the roof of the building (which you can access via the stairway from the top floor), there's a smallish pool up there (with changing and rest rooms) and a bar. You'll probably be surprised at the footprint of the building, which really isn't that wide or deep. It was a very nice to be to watch the fun happening on the beach for New Years night. Our room came with a little balcony (as I think all of the rooms do... all rooms face Copacabana beach only one block away). I peeked into the room next to ours and noticed it was a Suite, where the hallway had a wet bar in place of our standard room's closet space (all rooms come with an in-room safe... get the key & lock block from the front desk). The breakfast spread was very nice and the servers very friendly. Fresh fruits, sliced fruits, breads & rolls, meat & cheese & eggs on one side of the little hotel restaurant entrance, the other side had milk, juices, cereal and yogurt. There are two Internet terminals in a space just next to the elevator bank. It's 20 reals for an hour of Internet, which I think is a bit pricey for the area. There are Internet cafes nearby that will certainly be cheaper. The only negative thing that happened to us during our stay was that when we cranked up the air conditioning to the absolute maximum, the unit started dripping water IN the room. When I tried shaking the unit a bit for the water to run out the back (onto the balcony, which is where the air conditioning units normally drip out to), I heard ice falling off the pipes within the unit. Once I turned the unit off and back on (to a lower setting than "max"), I had no further water issues. There's a free shuttle bus that takes guests from the hotel back to GIG airport. It's not owned by the Windsor Palace per se, but it does a circuit around some of the hotels in the area and then heads out to the airport. The first bus in the morning leaves at 6 a.m., which may be cutting it a little too close if your flight is going out at 7:30 a.m., like ours was. We took a private taxi (arranged at the last second by the hotel) back to GIG for 65 reals. All in all, a very nice stay while on Copacabana.

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