Toque Hotel

The area feels safe even at night, and I never ran into trouble, though there isn't much to see or do around the hotel. The cleaners do a pretty good job compared with nearby places, but some areas need more attention: under the bed and inside the wardrobes, and the balcony could use a quick sweep. The windows could also do with a wipe sometime. The rooms have their own problems. Some are loud, with constant metal grinding, while others get hot from the sun and dust below, or are dark because there's no window. To avoid those, you'd need a big room facing the petrol station. The furniture is decent, but the windows are poor and let mosquitoes in, and some lamps are broken. The restaurant food is okay, but service is careless and forgetful, and they don't have about half the menu, so I couldn't really use it. That's a shame, since the top floor has potential if someone would look after it. I went to JJ Hotel across the street or the kibandas farther down instead, and those were okay. The aquarium beside reception could be nice, but the water looks so dirty, almost like it's straight from Nairobi River, that you can barely see the poor fish. You also need patience with management. They say they'll fix things in the room and then don't, and when you try to pay, they usually have no change and don't seem to learn from it. One day there was no electricity even though the other buildings on the street had power, and they couldn't get an electrician until night. The next day the water was off for hours, so once again I couldn't shower. They seem to have no sense of planning ahead. As Michael Jackson put it, "All I want to say is that they don't really care about us." Rooms: either loud (endless metal grinding noise) or hot (exposed to the sun and the dust from below) or dark (with no window), else you will have to take a big room towards the petrol station. Furniture is reasonable, the windows are garbage (mosquitoes going through as they please) and lamps are partly broken.