First off, religious Jews should make sure not to stay here! When I checked in on Friday I asked the front desk for a metal key to use on Shabbat. It took her a while to find it, but she gave it to me. Before Shabbat began I ran an errand and when I returned to the hotel, I noticed that I needed to use my key card to swipe in. (This is presumably for security, as the front desk is located on the rooftop and there is really nothing going on on the entrance level.) I returned to the front desk and asked the woman there how to enter the hotel on Shabbat and she said that since I couldn't swipe, I could ring the bell. As a Shabbat-observant Jew I can't use either the electric key card or the electric doorbell on Shabbat, and I told her that. She told me ”well then you'll just have to find someone to ring for you.” Shabbat-observant Jews also won't ask someone to do something on Shabbat that they can't do themselves, so I had to wait outside the hotel for a very long time upon returning on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, until someone else came along who was going inside. More generally, there were a couple of gross cleanliness moments. I found a huge cockroach in my shower one morning. I also came back one evening to find the bathmat neatly folded, but sitting in the sink, which was odd and kind of gross. Additionally, the water coming out of the shower smelled persistently sulfuric, which is weird given that Israel has great tap water. Finally, the blackout curtains in my room were stuck closed on one side, obstructing my view from the window and restricting the amount of light that comes into the room. Mid way through my stay, while I was trying to close the curtains on the other side, the dangling handle you use to move the curtain fell off. Rather than fixing it, the housekeeping staff just pushed it under the curtains, where it remained until the end of my stay. All in all, it wasn't a nightmare stay or anything like that. The location is good (though *loud*), and the rooftop pool/lounge is nice. Still, I will never stay here again, certainly not over Shabbat, and if you are a Shabbat observant Jew, you won't want to stay here either.
