Outhouse #7: Red Canyon Restroom About As Smelly As Can Be

Red Canyon Information Center
Intersection of US 89 and Scenic Byway 12
5375 E Highway 12
Panguitch, UT‎ USA

Where is it?

Park in the lot and while facing the main visitor center's building, look to your left. There, you'll see a map of the area and its many trails.

Behind the map is a sign pointing to the restrooms, which ironically enough are just a few feet to the left of the sign. One of those "duh" moments, if you will.

What's it like?

Anyone traveling by road from Zion Canyon to Bryce Canyon will pass through Red Canyon on the way. It's about 10 or so miles from the entrance road to Bryce, at the intersection of Scenic Byway 12 and HW 89 in southwestern Utah. It's certainly a worthwhile passageway.

Red Canyon looks a lot like Bryce Canyon, in that it's filled with that parks famous hoodoo structures. Only the rocks here are more red in color and the parks lets you travel through the canyon from the bottom, instead of from the top, as you would at Bryce. As a result, you can experience the sculpted look of the rocks from a different angle than you would at Bryce Canyon.

Unlike Zion, which also positions you on the bottom of a canyon floor surrounds you with rock formations and makes you feel closed in, the spaces here are wide, open and laid back. There's a lot of road and foot traffic here, and a lot of RVs (the place is legendary for its camping and stargazing), but rather than feel overly congested (and don't get me wrong, the traffic gets a bit sticky in parts, mostly when people drive through the arches cut through the rock in places) it has a feel of a small, friendly western town. Definitely worth spending a few hours here before heading to Bryce, if you can afford to do so.

The bathrooms here are another story. On the surface, they are very reminiscent of the ones experienced at the Kolob Canyon Visitors Center, only not as spacious and with more amenities and with better use of space.

However, they are also much, much smellier than those. Really, a very rancid, urine-and-feces-based stink permeates the air here -- and it's so sharp it will not diminish or lessen in intensity as time passes. I was in here for about five or 10 minutes, and that stink didn't go away, and when I finally went outside, I sucked in the fresh outdoor air as if I'd been underwater for too longer and needed fresh oxygen in my blood. Very smelly.

The rest of the place is pretty much straightforward for a national park bathroom/outhouse. The walls are white-painted concrete, the floors are red-painted concrete; both are chipped badly, especially the floor in areas where lots of foot traffic has been (like in front of the toilets and such).

No wall decorations, and there is lighting by fluorescent bulbs and natural light through windows, though on this visit the former was not on.

There is also a heater fan attached to the ceiling -- and it looked to be a bit too small for the amount of area it hoped to covered. Can't tell for sure because it wasn't on when I was there, but still it sure made me wonder how cold it got in the bathroom in the winter, especially if you were stuck behind those stall doors and away from the air flow.

Speaking of the stalls -- there are two of them here, both standard in size, with the place's lone trash can sitting in between their entrances. Inside, they feature white porcelain toilets that look to be set in front of the back wall just a little too much to look normal. As a result, the toilets kind of stand out too much -- and not in a decorative way, as seen in places like Sensi.

And, as said earlier, the paint on the floor in front of the toilet was badly chipped and some water seemed to be leaking from the commode in one stall, as the floor around it was pretty wet. (At least I hope it was water.)

Off-white steel dividers separate the stall and provide privacy for the two urinals and separate the urinals from the vanity, which is just your simple sink here, nothing more. Pretty bare bones, really.

Even the soap dispenser was ancient-looking -- one of those old plastic tanks with a metal put button that seeps soap onto your hand. I thought stuff like this was supposed to be in museums!

The sink is white porcelain, as are the urinals, and it has a regular faucet on it instead of some automatic one. To the left of the sink is an automatic hand drier -- also, very no frills.

The place isn't the cleanest I've been in, but outside of the smell and some leaking water, I saw no discernible trash on the ground. I guess that's a plus, no?

Still, while Red Canyon may be worth a stop, you may want to pass on stopping in these rest rooms unless you absolutely have to.

Marks out of 10:

4. Not very pleasant at all, especially the horrid smell.

Comments to the Management:

There's a draft in here, but clearly the strong odors here indicate that little air circulation is happening. That certainly need to be fixed -- unless, of course, it's a plumbing issue and not a ventilation issue. Also, the walls and floor could seriously use some new paint, and the toilets and sinks could go for a good scrubbing too. And to extend the friendliness of the setting outside, why not put up a few posters or events listings for the area around you.

Outhouse #6: Kolob Canyons Observation Area Toilets Are Filthy and Rust-Filled -- Ick

Kolob Canyons Visitors Center
3752 E Kolob Canyon Rd
New Harmony, UT‎ USA
utah.com/nationalparks/zion.htm

Where is it?

As stated in our Kolob Canyon Visitors Center toilet review, the observation area here requires taking a five-mile drive past the Visitors Center, into the mountain range behind it. (This is a paved road and it's a bit windy, but nothing too terrible.)

Once there, you find a parking area that has trails to various lookout points, as well as a central outhouse building, containing a handful of multi-sex chambers. The outhouse is pretty hard to miss too, considering that the overlook parking area is small and unidirectional -- you'll have to pass the outhouses either on your way in or out, no matter whether you park or just drive through.

What's it like?

On the outside, the outhouses here look a lot like the top-notch outhouses visited at Rainbow Point in Bryce Canyon. They look like a little log cabin -- and because very few people visit this part of the park compared to the lower canyon attractions at the main Zion Park entrance, you expect these to be pretty clean.

Sadly, that isn't the case. This place, while not a total train wreck, was pretty filthy inside. The floor, walls and amenities were covered in rust and what looked -- and smelled -- like urine, as well as some mis-thrown used toilet paper.

The chamber itself isn't much -- about eight feet by eight feet, a standard outhouse in size. It's got a compost toilet in the back corner, a skylight overhead (which actually does a better job of lighting this place than the toilets at the main Zion Park entrance), a couple rolls of toilet paper fixed to the walls, a warning sign asking you not to throw trash into the toilet (though nothing saying you shouldn't throw it on the floor) and that's about it. The floor is concrete, and despite the wood-like exterior, the inside is just sheet metal.

Also, it's a drafty place and you really feel the elements when inside, especially the wind when it blows (and it does often, since you're at about 8,000 feet when you're here).

The views outside are breathtaking, as you can imagine. But inside is a different story. This is definitely a rustic (and rust-filled) spot to relieve yourself -- the woods around you feel much cleaner, believe it or not.

In this case, it may be best to hold it in until you can make it back to the Kolob Canyon Visitors Center. Those aren't great facilities either, but they are much better than what you'll find here.

Marks out of 10:

4. An outhouse, yes, but there are still standards to adhere to.

Comments to the Management:

Clearly, "little used" also means "little cleaned." Enough said.

Stratosphere Toilet May Be Highest Bathroom in Vegas, But It Offers Little In Terms of Spectacle

Stratosphere Las Vegas Hotel and Casino
2000 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas, NV USA
www.stratospherehotel.com

Where is it?

Getting to this toilet here requires going on quite a journey. First, you have to park your car and head to the central elevators inside the casino -- all while avoiding the many distractions found there (difficult, considering the hotel's reputation for loose slots on the Strip).

Then, you have to go to a ticket booth and purchase admission tickets to the hotel's observation deck, which is 1,149 feet above the street below -- the highest observation tower west of the Mississippi, states the stats on this landmark. (The observation deck also plays host to three thrill rides, which take you even further high up and test the rider's guts when it comes to dropping that distance.... if you know what I mean. Of course, in the ads and video I saw of the rides, they really didn't look too intense. But once you're up there and get a better perspective of what's going on, you can see why they are described as being frightening thrill rides -- you feel the height of the building every step of the way.)

After buying admission tickets ($13 per person as of this writing), you have to make your way to the super-fast elevators that take you to the top. This sounds easy but really isn't, since the path to the elevators requires that you walk through a very tacky (and very expansive) shopping mall filled with just about every tacky (did I say tacky?) Vegas souvenir you can think of -- and just about every kind of foul smelling fast food vendor imaginable. The walk through the mall takes a good 20 minutes if you're going at a good pace.

When you finally reach the super-fast elevators, you have to pass through a security checkpoint and then wait for an elevator to arrive. The trip to the top takes only 30 seconds (our elevator operator said the lift system is the fasted in the world) -- so fast that your ears pop several times on the trip because of the change in air pressure.

Once at the top, you'll enter a 360 degree observation deck which houses a number of pay-to-use binocular devises, some displays and posters showing what you can look at in the distance, several benches, a fast food counter (with hot dogs, pretzels and such), a Starbucks (the highest one in the world, I was told) and lots of windows for sightseeing.

The bathrooms are located at opposite ends of this conundrum. The women's is located pretty close to the exit area for the incoming lifts -- you'll see a sign for them almost immediately after arriving.

The men's is harder to find, as you have to walk around to the other side of observation desk and look for the entrance to the down elevators. From there, you have to look a little harder, since the sign for them isn't quite as noticeable and large as the women's.

From the main roundabout pathway, face the entrance queue to the downward elevator and look to your right, for a small hallway about 10 feet in from the path. Down that hallway is a door leading to the men's bathroom.

What's it like?

With all that set-up, and the view you receive, you kind of expect the bathrooms here to be somewhat spectacular -- and they are not. This is a small restroom, about the size of a typical fast food establishment's facility, and about as impressive, and nothing more.

While that isn't terrible, it is also disappointing. These are the highest toilets in Las Vegas, located in the highest observation tower west of the Mississippi. Could they at least play up to its surroundings, like the bathroom at the Signature Room at the 95th in Chicago (slide 5 in this slideshow, if you're interested)?

As is, these are pretty run of the mill, boring, bland and in need of some touching up. It's a compact place and somewhat tight-fitting (much more than expected), with two stalls set against the back wall, two urinals set to the left of the stalls and a two-sink vanity station opposite the stalls. Two paper towel dispensers hand on the wall opposite the urinals.

The walls here are painted green, and the floor features a small and black interchange pattern on it, made up of small tiles -- similar to what we found on the floor at Steak n Shake Winter Park, only with a few more framing tiles used here.

There are two toilet stalls here, one handicap and one regular, both with white porcelain units. The handicap is pretty roomy but the regular stall is a bit tight-fitting -- just like the set up at Steak n Shake Winter Park. The two urinals, set next to one another at the front of the room with a privacy barrier between them, are also white porcelain. the toilets seemed in working order but there was some scum buildup on the grout and sealers -- though nothing horrendous.

The vanity, to the left of the urinals, features a two-sink station, both white porcelain, set in a black fiberboard counter and a badly chipped mirror hanging overhead. There is a supply cabinet under the sink vanity where the cleaning supplies are kept -- one of the doors to that cabinet was missing and you could see the supplies clearly. (Reminiscent of the bathroom at Country Ham 'n' Eggs, only without the homespun decor.)

The faucets here are of the push-button variety, like what we saw at IKEA Orlando, only these stayed on a little longer than those. There were also counter-fixed soap dispensers and a power outlet to the left side -- I guess in case you want to have a shave at the highest bathroom west of the Mississippi?

Also worth pointing out is that there is a baby changing area (about as basic and bare bones as the one found in our recent trip to Babys R Us in Orlando) -- so if you want to change your baby in the tallest observation tower west of the Mississippi, you'll have a chance to do so here. Why there are two boxes of tissues atop the baby changing area is a mystery to me.

And finally, there are the paper towel dispensers -- two of them, different models completely, with neither one fitting the decor of the bathroom much and one being automatic and one manual. The automatic one wasn't working. The manual worked but was fixed strangely in the wall -- as if it'd been knocked down from its wall inlet, fixed up again, and then re-fixed in a way that kept it up there for the time being. Pretty shoddy, to be honest.

Cleanliness-wise: Not bad. As said, some grime here and there. Odor-wise: Not too bad, but it did feel a bit dank in here.

Marks out of 10:

4. Normally a 5, but dropped a notch because of the disappointment I felt after entering. Should have more WOW considering its location.

Comments to the Management:

NEEDS MORE WOW! And a good scrubbing, and some minor repairs to fix the many anomalies. But more importantly -- it needs more WOW!

Islands of Adventure: Second Super Hero Island Toilets Suck

Islands of Adventure Theme Park
Super Hero Island Toilet 2
Universal Orlando Resort
1000 Universal Studios Plaza
Orlando, FL USA
www.universalorlando.com

Where is it?

From the Hulk Coaster, head further into Super Hero Island, towards the Spiderman ride, also one of the park's biggest draws (and one of the best rides I've ever been on -- just outstanding fun!).

Pass Spiderman and keep on going down that main path. You'll see a "Frozen Ice" stand on your right -- the letters drawn out in a comic-book-inspired font that will make you think this is the most extreme frozen ice stand in the world (and perhaps it is, though I didn't stop there on my way to the loo).

Across the street from that stand is the restrooms, marked by the word "RESTROOMS" in large comic-book lettering (the same way as you see them by the Cafe 4/Hulk Coaster toilets).

What's it like?

The Cafe 4/Hulk Coaster toilets I experienced were in a very crowded area filled with kids and adults, and they ended up being clean and nice. Not outstanding, but nice.

These facilities were surrounded by just as many people but the experience was opposite. There was a sharp smell of urine in here. The floor was covered in spilled water, paper and other substances. The toilet seats I spotted were dotted with pee. I am wondering if those little target stickers at the Cafe 4/Hulk Coaster toilets actually helped people aim, because these toilets were filled with the aftereffects of many marksmen who missed their marks. Ick.

Which is sad, because this place is a little roomier and friendlier in design than the Cafe 4/Hulk Coaster toilets. Though the differences are not great. There is still a row of urinals against the back wall and a stretch of toilet commodes opposite it. A set of sink stations sits ups front. The rest of the bathroom kind of unfolds behind the sinks.

The tile pattern on the wall is warmer here -- like the Cafe 4/Hulk Coaster toilets the walls and floor have a gray tile pattern and bland gray floor tiles, but the walls are also dotted with colorful blue, red and yellow highlights, which are more pleasant than the Cafe 4/Hulk Coaster toilets use of straight gray.

Still, despite those advantages, I could not look past the messiness of the place, nor its urine-based stink. As with the Cafe 4/Hulk Coaster toilets, I understand there will be some messiness involved. After all, this place is visited by thousands of people each week. But the traffic around these toilets and the Cafe 4/Hulk Coaster toilets was about the same (at least, from what I could see) and I was surprised by how much cleaner the Cafe 4/Hulk Coaster toilets were over these.

Not the worst toilets I experienced while at Islands of Adventure (those are the Toon Lagoon facilities -- review coming soon), but these were definitely in the lower echelon. Avoid if possible and walk the extra 10 minutes to the Jurassic Park toilets if you're in dire need.

Marks out of 10:

4. A nice mass-market design marred by a lack of upkeep.

Comments to the Management:

Simply put: You need to schedule your cleaners to visit this place more often. These toilets should be much cleaner than the Cafe 4/Hulk Coaster toilets (in case I haven't used that term enough in this review). They are more removed from the main action and not set next to a sit-down dining establishment. I'm thinking that because of their location, they are not cleaned as regularly -- that's a shame. These are good toilets that deserve better.

Don't Sit on the Seats at Blenheim Palace Indoor Toilets

Blenheim Palace
Indoor Toilets (near cafe)
Woodstock
Oxfordshire
United Kingdom
www.blenheimpalace.com

Where is it?

From the outside, round the main palace building and head towards the Water Terrace Cafe, which is on the back side of the palace (if coming in from the Woodstock entrance), overlooking the majestic Water Terrace gardens, which feature many sculptures, topiary and waterworks displays.

To get to the toilets, enter the cafe from the exterior entrance, pass through to the hallway on the other side of it, and follow the signs from there to the toilets. You'll go downstairs eventually and enter a humble corridor filled with various artifacts. In that hallway, you'll see a sign reading "Ladies and Gentlemen Toilet" -- with an arrow pointing to your left.

(This sign, of course, gave me quite a laugh because, taken at face value, it serves both as a directional and a declaration -- as in, "Ladies and Gentleman, I present you with TOILETS!" Pretty amusing, I thought.)

What's it like?

These are slightly smaller facilities than the palace's outdoor toilets, however they are also more ornate and more traditionally English in spirit than that other set.

The walls here are covered half in white tile and half in green-painted drywall. The floor is covered in beige tile. The back wall houses three urinals, all hooked up to a single pipe system that enforces an automatic flush mechanism on them (like how it's set up in the outdoor toilets). It also features two pedestal sinks on the side wall, and two toilet stalls in the back, one small and one set for handicapped persons.

The toilets here are similar in design to the ones found in the outdoor toilets, in that they are white porcelain models with wooden seats. However, the stalls here are a cut above the outdoor toilets in that they are roomier (even the small one is roomy) and they feature unique pocket doors instead of the standard hinged door you find at so many other places.

The pocket doors, I must admit, make a nice touch and infuse the place with a big of traditional English elegance. However, the bathroom itself was quite a mess and somewhat smelly. So much so that it became unpleasant to be there. No doubt this is because these facilities are heavily visited, whereas the outdoor toilets are not used as much.

On my first visit, a group of schoolboys stopped in before I did, and they were ramshackled the place. There was water everywhere, as well as plenty of mis-directed urine. This was most noticeable in the stall itself, where I found the floor and toilet seat covered with pee. Also, the smell of urine here was very sharp.

On a second visit, about an hour or so later, I had hoped to find the placed cleaned up but this wasn't the case. It was still in a considerable state of disorder and pee was still covering the toilet seat and stall floor. Needless to stay, I opted to walk to the outdoor toilets to do my business and found them in perfectly acceptable condition.

Marks out of 10:

4. A nice, old-fashioned design, but that fact gets lost in the mess I found here. A good place for a pee but not for much more, at least not until they are cleaned properly.

Comments to the Management:

Clearly, you need to figure out a better schedule of maintenance, since leaving the place in such a state isn't acceptable. (No doubt there's a reason no one used that stall in the hour or so that passed in between my first and second visits.) Also, some air freshener would be much appreciated. Quite a disappointment, since the outdoor toilets made for such a nice stop.

Full-Bodied Stink with Hints of Grossness at Total Wine Raleigh Toilets

Total Wine & More - Raleigh Triangle
Triangle Plaza
6105 Capital Blvd
Raleigh, NC USA 27616
www.totalwine.com

Where is it?

Proving that they must be for customers only, the toilets here are found near the exit, on the other side of the cashiers.

To get to them, you need to enter the store through the main entrance, go left, pass through an empty cashier line (or, if they are blocked, wait through a full one) and then take an immediate right, and go down a hallway composed solely of drywall. The bathrooms are down that hallway.

What's it like?

This mammoth wine and beverage warehouse (part of a chain throughout the southeast U.S.) on Raleigh's bustling Capital Boulevard offers a classy, comprehensive environment that wine, booze and beer lovers will find hard to hate. Aisles upon aisles of wine varietals, plenty of unique and commonly found spirits and a great beer selection (the only place I've been able to find the fine Latvian lager Luksus, believe it or not!) -- as beverage store selections go, this one is near the tops.

I wish I could say the same about the bathrooms, though. Housed in that aforementioned drywall corridor, the toilets here feel cheap, almost tacked on. These are colorless, even classless, facilities.

The walls are white, bare and porous, allowing you to hear just about every sound possible by the nearby string of cashiers. The floors, covered in rough-looking black and gray tile and dark grout, are dour-looking and appear dingier than they really are (or at least probably are). The fixtures are your standard white porcelain variety; clean and in good shape but boring and bland. There are no decorations on the wall or any sense of color anywhere.

Even worse is the sharp smell of urine that permeates the air in here. Really stinging, rivaling the stink more commonly associated with poorly kept gas station stalls. (What is it with fancy-looking stores that have foul smelling toilets? I'm looking at you, Fresh Market Orlando and Bed Bath and Beyond Waterford Lakes, for an answer here!) The smell was so bad, it rivaled the pungency of the toilet I visited at the Riverside Walk trail head in Zion National Park -- and that was an outhouse!

Marks out of 10:

4. Bland environment through and through -- with a smell that lingers long in the nose and palette. Great conceit for wine, not great for bathrooms, though.

Comments to the Management:

For starters, how about putting something on the walls here -- like a circular or some of those general wine vine decorations you can pick up at any dollar store. Next, put some air fresheners here -- you really need it!

"Welcome to the Awful Waffle"

Waffle House
1646 Bells Highway
Walterboro, SC USA 29488
www.wafflehouse.com

Where is it?

This is a small restaurant, so finding the toilet isn't difficult. After entering the building, you'll find yourself in the middle of the establishment. Ahead of you is the lunch counter and the grill. To the right is the dining room, filled with its sea of Formica tables and such. To the left is a hallway leading to the bathrooms and storage room.

What's it like?

This 24-diner chain, found throughout the southeast U.S., has never been one of my favorite places to eat. The food is decidedly greasy, and the menu consists of a lot of items I would not normally eat unless I had to -- notably breakfast foods, which I've never been much of a fan of. (However, those who like their pancakes, eggs and hashbrown patties heavy with oil may find the place delightful.)

Of course, we stopped here because we were driving northward on a national holiday and nothing else was open -- and we were hungry enough to suffer through the eventual indigestion it would produce. The experience wasn't bad -- the wait staff was friendly enough and the service speedy. The food was okay -- I had a hashbrown patty with cheese and some Jimmy Dean sausage on the side, while my companion had a slice of country ham and some eggs -- not exactly the tastiest breakfast ever but not too bad either. The cuisine left only a slight bitter taste in my mouth after the fact, which was cured by some anti-acid chews and ginger ale. Yum.

The parking lot of this place was filled with vagrants and overflow parking from the hotel next door, so I assumed the bathroom would be horrendous -- which tends to be the case when you have too many people using it too often. But it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. It wasn't great either, mind you.

The men's room is a tidy space, maybe five foot square in size. A toilet on one side, a sink in the corner opposite that, and a trashcan in the far back right corner. It's somewhat clean but still considerably worn down, and it smells not so much of human waste but of trash and mildew -- and the smell grows more sharp the longer you are in there.

The bathroom's door is made of heavy metal and has a heavy steel latch on it instead of a lock to seal it -- my first impression, when I walked in, was that it was once used as meat locker before the storage closet down the hall was created. Clearly, this is where I'd like to be if the place were ever held up.

The toilet and sink are your standard white porcelain models -- clean but not exactly sparkling. The floors are covered with that horrid dull brick-colored tile you seem to see in so many places these days, though this one was cleaner than some of the other places I've been to that use it.

The highlight here is the sink, which packs in a lot of options into its corner space. It's a small sink, maybe only a foot or so in width, and above it, just over the faucets, are a air dryer and soap dispenser. Unfortunately, these items are also a bit lower than required, making it hard not to drip soap onto the faucets when applying or having water dribble everywhere when drying your hands. Still, I guess the thought is there.

Marks out of 10:

4. It's cleaner than expected, but it's still pretty grimy, and that not-so-heavenly aroma of trash and mildew in the air certainly isn't something I'd like to experience more than once.

Comments to the Management:

An air freshener or two -- or even some spray -- would be a nice addition. And if you can, consider lifting the hand dryer and soap dispenser a little higher, so we can actually get our hands in there and give them a proper cleaning.

Little "Fresh" at This Market's Toilet

The Fresh Market
5000 Dr. Phillips Boulevard
Orlando, FL USA
www.thefreshmarket.com

Where is it?

A little hard to find, because of the many culinary distractions found here. Still, the easiest way around it is to head for the cashiers. Go past them and, while facing the front of the building, head right. You'll come to a small hallway just past the line of registers, in which you'll find a manager's office and -- ironically enough -- the bathrooms. Gives new meaning to the term "throne room," don't you think?

What's it like?

Fresh Market is a competitor of Whole Foods. It offers high-end gourmet foods at somewhat elevated prices (you pay for the quality, to so speak) and features aisle upon aisle of high-quality foods, from breads to veggies to baked goods, to name a few. The deli and meat and fish counters are supreme, rivaled only by Whole Foods and some small specialty butchers in Orlando.

The place itself is neat and well-maintained, offering visitors plenty of culinary distractions to temp them while they are here. However the bathrooms, at least upon my visit, were anything but that. The small "one bagger" was covered with trash and water and held a funky odor to it -- a strange mix of urine and trash, it seemed like. Not quite what I was expecting from such an "upscale" store.

More so, I was also surprised by the small quarters available here. If you think about it, this is essentially a supermarket, and it caters to a lot of people and has a lot of employees -- shouldn't it provide more spacious facilities that can accommodate more than one person at a time?

Furthermore, the facilities themselves are nothing special: Sterile brown tile on the walls, rust-colored tiled on the ground. White porcelain sink and toilet, and a hand drier and a towel dispenser. Nothing I haven't seen at an above-average gas station, really. How disappointing. Who knew you'd get more comfortable services from Publix (albeit not by much)?

Marks out of 10:

4. It's serviceable, sure, but as with our recent visit to Bed Bath and Beyond, you expect something better than this from an upscale locale. The fact that it smelled bad and was pretty dirty dropped the score even further.

Comments to the Management:

Some upscale additions would be welcome, or even some gourmet-minded decor. A place like this makes us feel elite when we enter, so why shouldn't we feel elite when we're doing our business here. Other than that, the place needs to be monitored more closely, to ensure consistent cleanliness, and to cut the smell quotient some. Yuck.