Sydney's Most Scenic Laundry Room
Written: Nov 08 '02 (Updated Nov 08 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Decent value for Syd CBD. Laundry room. Location.
Cons: Noisy, small rooms.
The Bottom Line: Cramped rooms. Nice staff. Good central location. But really, one chooses this place for the laundry room.
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| Urbanist's Full Review: Park Regis-Sydney |
From the outside, Park Regis looks like quite a nice place. A 45-storey building just a block off of Hyde Park, seemingly made mostly of windows, it looks like it would be one of those serene aeries that one always longs for when lodging in a city as dense as Sydney.
Though central Sydney is full of architectural showoffs -- buildings made to look like unfurled sails, etc, it remains a cluster of tightly packed skyscrapers that feels more East Asian than Australian. Street-level light is precious, so one point in favor of Park Regis is its location, nicely situated between two open spaces.
Town Hall, a block to the west, anchors a cluster of ornate Victorian buildings whose preservation has created a large sunny clearing in the dark forest of towers. (Town Hall is also the most central point in Sydney's railway network, with direct trains to most corners of the city.) To the east, Hyde Park, the eastern edge of the skyscraper-mass, is only a block away, opening into a series of parks that can lead you all the way to Sydney's greatest achievement, the Royal Botanical Garden (see separate review).
The rooms? Well, they certainly motivate you to get out of bed, turn off the telly, and get out into Sydney. Drab, cramped, and above all noisy (the windows are single-paned despite the busy street), they are not places to loiter in. Earplugs are a must unless you are the soundest of sleepers.
The rooms themselves offer few long views, though you can see a bit of Hyde Park from one side or of Town Hall from the other. The building is 45 storeys, but alas, the hotel occupies only floors 4-15. If you want to be higher than that, you'll have to buy one of the condos that fill the other floors up through 44. Come to think of it, that may be the point.
And yet, I would stay there again, just for the laundry room.
In all my travels, I've encountered hotels with top-floor restaurants, top-floor pools, and top-floor luxury suites reached only with special keys. But I've never encountered a top-floor laundry room.
Buy a packet of detergent from the friendly front desk, then soar to the pinnacle clutching your bag of sweat-soaked apparel. Behold! Stunning views to the west, north, and east are more than enough to hold your attention for a 34-minute wash cycle (Au$2 coins only), and they held mine even for the 45-minute dryer (Au$1).
You can't see straight north, to Circular Quay and the Opera House, because taller buildings are in the way. But northeast! There is the Botanic Garden, and beyond it the whole sweep of eastern Sydney Harbour, all bays and promontories that invite you to learn their names and histories. And the islands! There is tiny Fort Denison, little more than a turret sticking out of the water, but formerly "Pinchgut Island", a place of torture for miscreant convicts whose name speaks for itself. Further out are Clark and Shark Islands, near the south side, each a burst of green in the blue water, both part of the Sydney Harbour National Park. Follow the bouncing line of this harbour's erotic shores and you can see the North and South Heads of the harbour's opening, and beyond that, the Tasman Sea, as this corner of the Pacific is locally called.
By now, if you're like me, your wash cycle is done and you can almost hear your cotton clothes shrinking. If you want your jeans to still fit, you may want to check them now. The dry cycle will more than adequate to take in the other directions.
West, then. You can look almost straight down on Town Hall (not its most flattering angle), but just beyond it, there's Darling Harbour, Sydney's most concentrated area of tourist traps. From this angle, the "attractions" of Darling Harbour look especially unattractive. Mostly you see the elevated motorway that crosses the harbour, with an IMAX theatre extruding sharply up through the median, almost as though it were a clay object that was squashed when motorway landed on it from outer space. On both sides of the motorway, other "attractions" beckon, but they all look suitably small, slapdash, and shallow, which many of them actually are. And even from here, you can imagine how effectively that motorway must drown out almost any authentic sound.
So look further. Here you may want to pull out a map (Tip: Don't by Gregory's map of "Sydney", which covers only the CBD. The one you want is "Suburban Sydney", which covers most of the remotely interesting parts of Greater Sydney in street-level detail.) On a rare clear day, you can see the Blue Mountains, and on any day you can make out some of the most intriguing inner-west suburbs: the University district of Newtown, the warrenlike peninsular districts of Glebe and Drummoyne. Those towers in the middle distance, a little north of west? That's Parramatta, the geographic center of the Sydney region. Parramatta is to Sydney as Oakland is to San Francisco, or La Defense is to Paris. It's the place where a lot of the real work gets done, and if you don't mind the sound of real work, it's not entirely without charms.
Check the dryer. OK? Overdried underwear can be so unpleasant, especially in the typical Sydney heat.
Just down the hall is the east and south view. East, you can trace Oxford Street, a gay nightlife district that -- like such places the world over -- is fast becoming the straight nightlife district. To the left, a cluster of tall buildings at the end of William Street marks Kings Cross, a former drug-ridden nightmare-zone now being cleaned up so that more highrise luxury apartments can go in. And of you can see Bondi Beach and still more of the Pacific.
To look south, you climb up a little stairway to a platform where there's a tiny pool, usually unused given the ferocious wind at this height. I'm not sure why a pool needs a view, since you can't see the view while swimming. Still, there it is: the east and west views you've already seen, plus a new southward vista. South, away from the harbor, you look right down Sydney's esophagus and into its intestines: the main rail lines into the city are here, as is the airport, and major industry is everywhere in the distance. So, too, are the homes of people too poor to escape the noise and fumes. Those drab brick highrises in the middle-distance are part of Redfern, famous as the city's ghetto for deracinated Aboriginals, though now, like everywhere else close-in, submitting to the pressures of gentrification.
And in all directions, you can enjoy the sheer richness of residential Sydney. Skyscrapers aside, this is mostly a city of very small houses on twisting one-lane streets. A view from the 45th floor is no substitute for wandering these warrenlike districts, full of Federation-style tropical homes that are often no more than four meters wide. Still, even at this height, the sheer intensity of detail can hold the eye for hours, at least until someone taps you on the shoulder and asks if they can use your dryer, whose cycle ran out so long ago that the clothes are already cold.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Urbanist
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Location: San Francisco
Reviews written: 78
Trusted by: 72 members
About Me:
Streetwise, academically credentialed gay renaissance man. For real bio, click "more" in profile.
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