Our Adoption Journey: Thoughts on the China Hotel in Guangzhou

For our last adoption, we stayed at the White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island. That hotel was nice, and the island is quaint. But we got tired of the shop owners asking us to come in and shop all.the.time. A few of them even chased us down. The White Swan is now being remodeled, so our agency is now using the China Hotel by Marriott, which is not on the island.

I know a lot of people will disagree with us .... even people in our travel group. But we LOVE this hotel and we were SO glad not to be on the island. Here are some things about it:

We booked the Executive Suite and it is fabulous. It has 1 1/2 bathrooms and 2 separate rooms separated with a door. Our travel agency prices were not that much more for the suite, so we decided to go for it. We are SO glad we did!!!!! There is another suite called the Executive 55 suite and I think that one is larger than a regular room, but doesn't have the totally separate 2nd room.
The Concierge has strollers you can rent. It is a 200RMB deposit and then 20RMB per day. The strollers are not that great, but it's getting the job done.
The Concierge has a Papa John's menu in English and they will order it for you. Go down to the desk and you can point to what you want, they'll call and order, and then tell you when to be back in the lobby for the delivery!
The bed is perfect. After the beds in Beijing and Fuzhou, our backs are thanking us!
The Concierge staff speaks pretty good English. If you want to go somewhere by taxi, they will write it in Chinese for you to give it to the taxi driver. And the China Hotel info is on the little paper, so that can help you get back!
McDonald's is next door to the hotel. We are not McDonald's eaters back home, but we did eat there a couple of times. It was cheap and the ice cream was great! They do have picture menus with some English on them.
Hotel restaurants - Food Street is good, Cafe Veranda is where the breakfast buffet is and their lunch/dinner menu is good, but expensive.
7-11 is pretty close. We found drinks and bottled water to be cheapest there.
As usual, ask the Housekeeping staff to empty your minibar so you can use the fridge for your own drinks!
Small convenience store is in the Shopping Arcade. They have basics, including baby stuff.
Exchanging Money - Technically, the hotel only allows you to change $200 per room per day. However, the Concierge staff is wonderful and I bet they would let you change more.
Shamian Island - By taxi, it's about 15 minutes, and 20RMB one-way. We did go a couple of times to do some souvenir shopping.
Marriott Rewards members get free internet. If you aren't a member, join for free when you check in.
Underground tunnels - there are a few we found. One is for the Metro, but you can use the tunnels instead of crossing the street! Yue Xiu Park is great!!!!!!
The hotel has an outdoor play area on the 4th floor.