Alt Hotel, Ottawa

It felt a little voyeuristic, watching a couple arguing then amorously making up in a hotel bedroom.
It’s bad enough if you hear that through the walls, but you don’t normally get to see it. But this was art, not real life, with the funky Alt Hotel in Ottawa taking part in a dance weekend by opening its rooms up to a local dance company, La 2e Porte à Gauche, for site-specific performances.
That’s the sort of stuff that makes it a far more fun place to stay then the average city centre hotel.
The Alt Hotel opened in 2016 in the perfect position, just a 5-minute walk from Parliament Hill, around the block from some lively street cafes and close to the excellent downtown museums and markets. The timing was fabulous too, as Canada celebrates its 150th birthday in 2017.

The hotel is designed to be fast and functional with enough luxury to appeal to tourists and business travellers. Its 148-bedrooms have queen-sized beds and a fabulous shower, and rooms with dual queen-sized beds also have a bath. Large screen TVs, a coffee machine and a work desk are other welcome touches. The rooms are so well designed that it took me a while to find the wardrobe cunningly hidden behind a full length mirror.
The reception is a blaze of colourful artsy panels, the floor is a patchwork of jazzy carpets, some walls are lively green or red, and breakfast is a relaxed affair where you grab what you fancy from the shelves and sit around the bar.
There’s a small gym, seven meeting rooms and an open area that general manager Julie Brisebois describes as the perfect place for casual brainstorming.
Alt Hotels are part of the upmarket family-owned Le Germain chain.