Belvada Hotel Room Tour
Jul. 3rd, 2021 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeSo yesterday evening we checked into the Belvada Hotel in Tonopah.
The Belvada is the sister property to the Mizpah Hotel. Unlike the Mizpah, however, the Belvada restoration was something of a clean slate. The Mizpah is a historic landmark, and the rebuild there needed to maintain the existing historic hotel. The Belvada started as a bank, and has been over its lifetime offices, apartments, and all manner of other things. They could essentially gut the building to the bare walls and start over. That they did.
This picture, incidentally, is in the elevator lobby. They have two carts available for customer use. Lisa and I used one to bring our luggage from the adjacent parking lot.
This is the side entrance to the hotel, closer to the parking lot, and where the accessible entrance ramp is (and where we could roll the luggage cart out to the parking lot.) The Belvada shares the parking lot of the Tonopah Convention Center, which shows you how close they are to each other.
This sign is on the front side of the hotel on the main street. Tonopah Family Fitness is visible to the right, and according to the hotel guide, is available to the guests of the hotel.
Here's what the Belvada looks like from the Mizpah.
The lobby at the Belvada is beautiful. The windows here face onto Tonopah's main street, and look across to the Jim Butler Inn & Suites, which is a decent hotel catering to more budget-minded travelers. The Belvada is frankly the most expensive of Tonopah's hotels as far as I can tell, with prices comparable to some of the other hotels where Westercon has been held. However, there are other hotels in Tonopah that are less expensive.
The Mizpah Hotel is diagonally opposite from the Belvada.
Just off the main lobby is a small lounge built inside what used to be the safe for the bank that was originally in this building. Kuma Bear is testing out the comfy seats.
There are four seats in this lounge. Maybe I should establish it as my office during the convention?
There is a small coffee shop off the Belvada lobby, open in the mornings only, selling pastries, tea, and coffee drinks. For a full breakfast, patrons are invited to visit the Pittman Cafe in the Mizpah across the street.
This painting in the coffee shop shows the tent of Jim Butler, who founded Tonopah when his mule kicked up high-grade silver ore. Things are a lot nicer nowadays than they were at the turn of the previous century!
Because a lot of hotel room photos miss things that Lisa and I think important, we took a bunch of photos before we moved into the room.
Some of the rooms in the Belvada, including room 32 where we are staying, have full kitchenettes, including a microwave and conventional oven with a full stove top, a sink, a half-size refrigerator with a small freezer compartment, and a Lavazza cartridge coffee maker.
The room includes glasses, cups, plates, and utensils for two people, plus soap and a sponge, and a drying rack to do the dishes.
According to the hotel web site, the kitchenette rooms have queen beds.
There are bedside tables on both sides of the bed. There is an easily accessible power outlet on each side of the bed. The lamp includes a USB and standard power outlet. Both Lisa and I have lots of electronic appliances, and there was plenty of room to connect all of them.
The bathroom has a bathtub and shower. Besides overhead and over-mirror lights, there is also a ceiling heater fan.
While the room has lots of storage locations including a chest of drawers and the cabinets in the kitchen, there is no closet. There is, however, a rack and some hangers in the room. While not necessarily ideal, it's certainly better than the Holiday Inn Express in Dublin, which had nowhere to put anything except on the floor.
I had no problem connecting to the complimentary wi-fi with my computer and my smartphone. Here's a picture of the speed test, which is just fine. That's good, because it's likely that some of the times I'm staying here I will need to do some Day Jobbe work. Also, while the chairs in the room aren't as comfortable as my office chair, it's not a back-and-leg killer like the chairs at La Posada in Winslow, where four hours left me hobbled over and barely able to walk!
There are different kitchenette rooms. The hotel let us have a look inside inside one of them.
Room 21 has the same bed and side table layout as our room 32.
This room is on a corner, and looks toward the Convention Center. That's where the flagpole is in the distance, with the shared parking lot between the hotel and the Convention Center.
The kitchenette here is smaller than in room 32, as there is only a two burner stove and no oven.
We've asked to stay in this room or one of the others with the same layout when we stay here again, which will be next weekend during an on-site meeting of the Westercon 74 committee. We like being able to look toward the convention center, but the larger kitchen is nice. We've had pizza for dinner both last night and tonight, which would be more difficult without a conventional oven. This will be less of an issue next week becuase we anticipate having meals with the other committee members most of the time we're here.
While of course this hotel won't hold all of our members, and as it is more expensive, many of our members won't want to stay here anyway, I'm very happy with it. Lisa and I may be in Tonopah for as much as two weeks around the dates of Westercon next year. While we initially considered renting a short-term apartment in Tonopah, some investigation showed that it would cost about as much per night to just stay in the Belvada, which would save us the bother of changing from one place to another, and with the kitchenette, we won't have to eat out every night. Honestly, I would have rather had a room like this during ConJosé, because I often got back to the room after every place to eat had closed. That won't be a problem here.
The Belvada is the sister property to the Mizpah Hotel. Unlike the Mizpah, however, the Belvada restoration was something of a clean slate. The Mizpah is a historic landmark, and the rebuild there needed to maintain the existing historic hotel. The Belvada started as a bank, and has been over its lifetime offices, apartments, and all manner of other things. They could essentially gut the building to the bare walls and start over. That they did.
This picture, incidentally, is in the elevator lobby. They have two carts available for customer use. Lisa and I used one to bring our luggage from the adjacent parking lot.
This is the side entrance to the hotel, closer to the parking lot, and where the accessible entrance ramp is (and where we could roll the luggage cart out to the parking lot.) The Belvada shares the parking lot of the Tonopah Convention Center, which shows you how close they are to each other.
This sign is on the front side of the hotel on the main street. Tonopah Family Fitness is visible to the right, and according to the hotel guide, is available to the guests of the hotel.
Here's what the Belvada looks like from the Mizpah.
The lobby at the Belvada is beautiful. The windows here face onto Tonopah's main street, and look across to the Jim Butler Inn & Suites, which is a decent hotel catering to more budget-minded travelers. The Belvada is frankly the most expensive of Tonopah's hotels as far as I can tell, with prices comparable to some of the other hotels where Westercon has been held. However, there are other hotels in Tonopah that are less expensive.
The Mizpah Hotel is diagonally opposite from the Belvada.
Just off the main lobby is a small lounge built inside what used to be the safe for the bank that was originally in this building. Kuma Bear is testing out the comfy seats.
There are four seats in this lounge. Maybe I should establish it as my office during the convention?
There is a small coffee shop off the Belvada lobby, open in the mornings only, selling pastries, tea, and coffee drinks. For a full breakfast, patrons are invited to visit the Pittman Cafe in the Mizpah across the street.
This painting in the coffee shop shows the tent of Jim Butler, who founded Tonopah when his mule kicked up high-grade silver ore. Things are a lot nicer nowadays than they were at the turn of the previous century!
Because a lot of hotel room photos miss things that Lisa and I think important, we took a bunch of photos before we moved into the room.
Some of the rooms in the Belvada, including room 32 where we are staying, have full kitchenettes, including a microwave and conventional oven with a full stove top, a sink, a half-size refrigerator with a small freezer compartment, and a Lavazza cartridge coffee maker.
The room includes glasses, cups, plates, and utensils for two people, plus soap and a sponge, and a drying rack to do the dishes.
According to the hotel web site, the kitchenette rooms have queen beds.
There are bedside tables on both sides of the bed. There is an easily accessible power outlet on each side of the bed. The lamp includes a USB and standard power outlet. Both Lisa and I have lots of electronic appliances, and there was plenty of room to connect all of them.
The bathroom has a bathtub and shower. Besides overhead and over-mirror lights, there is also a ceiling heater fan.
While the room has lots of storage locations including a chest of drawers and the cabinets in the kitchen, there is no closet. There is, however, a rack and some hangers in the room. While not necessarily ideal, it's certainly better than the Holiday Inn Express in Dublin, which had nowhere to put anything except on the floor.
I had no problem connecting to the complimentary wi-fi with my computer and my smartphone. Here's a picture of the speed test, which is just fine. That's good, because it's likely that some of the times I'm staying here I will need to do some Day Jobbe work. Also, while the chairs in the room aren't as comfortable as my office chair, it's not a back-and-leg killer like the chairs at La Posada in Winslow, where four hours left me hobbled over and barely able to walk!
There are different kitchenette rooms. The hotel let us have a look inside inside one of them.
Room 21 has the same bed and side table layout as our room 32.
This room is on a corner, and looks toward the Convention Center. That's where the flagpole is in the distance, with the shared parking lot between the hotel and the Convention Center.
The kitchenette here is smaller than in room 32, as there is only a two burner stove and no oven.
We've asked to stay in this room or one of the others with the same layout when we stay here again, which will be next weekend during an on-site meeting of the Westercon 74 committee. We like being able to look toward the convention center, but the larger kitchen is nice. We've had pizza for dinner both last night and tonight, which would be more difficult without a conventional oven. This will be less of an issue next week becuase we anticipate having meals with the other committee members most of the time we're here.
While of course this hotel won't hold all of our members, and as it is more expensive, many of our members won't want to stay here anyway, I'm very happy with it. Lisa and I may be in Tonopah for as much as two weeks around the dates of Westercon next year. While we initially considered renting a short-term apartment in Tonopah, some investigation showed that it would cost about as much per night to just stay in the Belvada, which would save us the bother of changing from one place to another, and with the kitchenette, we won't have to eat out every night. Honestly, I would have rather had a room like this during ConJosé, because I often got back to the room after every place to eat had closed. That won't be a problem here.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 05:52 am (UTC)Will you also share coverage of the Mizpah and/or the Jim Butler?
no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-07 05:06 am (UTC)It's currently my plan to keep a safe distance from the Clown Motel, but it would mildly surprise me if not a single fan went out of their way to lodge there.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-07 11:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-04 06:58 am (UTC)