As we enter into what will probably be my last week of posting about our recent trip to Burlington, VT (about time right?), It's time to circle back to our accomodations. I mentioned in one of my posts a while ago that the hotel we stayed at didn't quite live up to the expectations. I'm going to cover some of that today.
When I planned this trip, my original plan was to find a nice VRBO or Air BNB somewhere. I'm just a little hesitant about any of that. I know thousands of people do it everyday, but the recent privacy issues and scams have really turned me off to those sorts of things.
Instead, we ended up at the Hilton Burlington Lake Champlain. It sits just a short walk away from the shores of Lake Champlain and as you can see in the opening photo it offers amazing views of the Lake and New York in the distance.
I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that we were able to get our flight and rental car for free due to credit card points that we had to redeem or face losing them. Thanks to that windfall, I decided to splurge a bit on the hotel room. I got us a corner room with an amazing view on the very top floor of the hotel.
Unfortunately, the weather didn't fully cooperate while we were visiting, so the amazing views were a bit muted by the fog and rain. We knew this might happen though, so it wasn't a huge deal. We also knew in advance that they were doing some construction on the hotel entrance, so getting in and out would be a bit awkward. No big deal.
Clocking in over $3000 for the five total night we stayed at the Hilton Burlington, Lake Champlain, I kind of feel like we got ripped off a bit. I don't usually spend that kind of money on a hotel, so I don't know if that is normal or extra ordinary, but when I am dropping that kind of money, I feel like the facilities should be top notch.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
I snapped this shot as 
If you look really closely though, you will see that a piece of the flashing appears to be pulled away from the building between the seventh and the sixth floors. Due to the wind, that piece of flashing would bang against the building non stop and before long it became absolutely mind numbing. Even in the middle of the night it would constantly bang.
Sure, we could have asked for a different room, but I'm not sure if they would have been able to accomodate us. Maybe that one's on me.
The hotel itself has some pretty cool seating areas and I have a feeling in the summer it would be quite fun to sit out on this raised patio and watch the people go by in the park. I don't fault the hotel for the weather not being ideal. That was our own fault and just happened to be a by product of the time of year we visited.
I think I also mentioned in another post that the hotel had bikes you could rent to ride around the city and on the Greenway across the street. Again, given better weather, that might have been a viable option for us.
The hotel itself just seemed to be in a general state of disrepair. In addition to the noisy flashing outside our room, you can also see in the photo above they had a number of leaks throughout the building.
As part of our reservation, that hotel gave us these $5 vouchers that we could use for food or drinks each night at the hotel bar. We thought this was a pretty good perk and we made it a habit of either "pre-gamming" at the bar or hitting on our way back for a night cap.
It wasn't until I got our final bill that I realized how much of a sham this was. Apparently hotels now charge something called an "Urban Destination Fee" or something similar. The long and short of it was, they charged me $24 each day to give me $10 worth of "complimentary" perks.
What a joke! I'm not kidding, if you saw the receipt from our stay, you would be disgusted by the number of random charges that they throw in these days.
The more time we spent at the bar in the hotel, the more we started to realize just how dirty it was. While the first night we actually got a snack there and had a couple of drinks, but the last night, we were pretty much just getting our drinks to go.
As you will see in the photos, it was pretty nasty. It's interesting how general cleanliness seems to have declined since Covid happened. Even in the rental houses my wife and I have stayed in, you almost have to do your own deep clean to get it anywhere near acceptable.
Actually, on our last night, we found a spot away from the bar that wasn't too dirty and we decided we were going to stay there for a little bit. That's when the final straw broke and we knew it was time to go. I went up to the bar to order another round of drinks and they let me know that they were out of Captain Morgan. How do you run out of Captain Morgan? That's like a staple of any bar.
They should have cases of the stuff sitting on standby for when they need it. I don't know, maybe I am being too picky, but it just seemed pretty unacceptable to us.
I'm not saying don't stay at the Hilton on Lake Champlain, but definitely do your research before you go there and try not to pay what I did for your room.
Ultimately, I'm not sure the view justified the cost of the room. I think if I were to do it again, I'd stay at a place that was a little further away from the Lake and closer to Church Street. On a nice day you can always walk down to the Lake and watch the sunset, so you really wouldn't be missing too much.
Check back on Wednesday as we take a final stroll through downtown Burlington.
Sports Talk Social - @bozz.sports
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or