Hotel Centennial College Residence (Toronto, Canada)

The people who run this place are very nice, polite and friendly. Breakfast is free and really quite good.

The location is good and the centre of Scarborough is just a couple of miles along the road. Here, there is an impressive range of shops and transport links to many areas including the centre of Toronto, about nine miles away.

This place used to be a three-star hotel. Rooms are clean and quite pleasant. There are extras to pay for but, even with those, the total cost is really very reasonable. The pool is great but is only open in the evenings and some days, not at all..

The bathroom is ancient and comes complete with dirty tiles. They run out of crucial things like parking passes and other important services such as air conditioning, don't work. The concept, apparently, is to get the resident students attuned to life in the real world. In practice, though, the situation is reversed!

This heady mix of visiting tourists and young students doesn't work. The former wants a comfortable, quiet base, while the latter comes to life as night falls. Then there is a night long competition to see who can be the loudest. The entire place is run by students and currently, there are some admin blips. Check in is a time wasting nightmare..

Wi-Fi in the room comes at an extra cost. You also pay to use the car park. There is freedom of movement at night when you regain access to the building via an electronic card. You are likely to find yourself reliant on those inside the building though as the card doesn't work