Part of the Ascend Hotel Collection from Choice Hotels, the Hotel Harry is located in the Surrey Hills neighborhood of Sydney, Australia. It's building is historic, originally designed in the "federation architecture" style, but restored in the 21st century, with a Cuban mansion being a theme. It has four stories, with a restaurant, speakeasy, and terrace on the two bottom floors. It has 20 hotel suites on the top two floors, and my brother and I stayed in one of them for one night before our flight back to the States.
We reserved the room via the Choice website, with a nightly cost of au$165 per night. I liked the name....I still remember the 1986 adventure movie 'Let's Get Harry'...not a great movie by any means, but great to remember how fun it was to watch when young.
Since our cruise boat required us to be off by 09:00, an Uber got us to the hotel by 10:00 (30 minute drive with traffic). It's a bit hard to find, with the restaurant and bar part of the business being prominently displayed, but the Hotel Harry sign being less so. The front door is always locked, with your room key letting you in once checked in. The front desk attendant saw us and buzzed us in, but later learned the desk is not always attended (i.e. not 24 hours). All the rooms have been retrofitted with modern keycard locks, with entry into the upper floors controlled by it.
It wasn't too busy on a Thursday, and the friendly and gracious front desk attendant checked us into our room. All the rooms have only one bed (twin or queen), but because it wasn't too busy, the hotel staff brought us a rollaway bed. That didn't have to happen, but we were very grateful for it.
The location is great, easily walkable to many Sydney attractions along with access to the bus and train lines.
The room is large if expecting it to be European size, but small if American. The elevator is definitely European size, allowing two people to fit, or one person with 2 pieces of luggage. The bathroom had obviously been renovated from an original non-bathroom design, with an open floor plan: shower and sink and toilet distributed in the room, but no counter space. The water pressure was very strong (no low flow shower head here). The room did have a portable Air Conditioning unit and it worked really well. There was a wall mounted TV that we didn't have a chance to use, along with a small refrigerator. The bed was soft, with comfortable pillows. There was a small desk near the door, and the few floor outlets were Australian style, so needed our converter.
It wasn't too loud downstairs during our stay, but could imagine it being a lot more rowdy during the weekends. The hotel rooms (especially on the third floor) would suffer for it. We needed to wake up early to catch our flight, so ended up leaving before 06:00, and the front desk was locked and unmanned. This had been warned to us and expected.
All in all, a refurbished hotel with old bones, reminding one of what an old style tavern/hotel would be. For us, it was a decent place to stay for a night or two, with really helpful and friendly staff. But I could also see people who are used to modern amenities to not care for it as much. read more