I'm brand new to FT, but have been a Bellevue regular for business travel for a while now. The renovations to the King and Double rooms are not complete even though the deadline is early February; however all the suites and connecting rooms are finished. I toured the Avenue Suites with the business manager this past stay and upgraded to one for the week. Here are my impressions.

First, the renovated rooms are quite nice - very modern styling, brighter feeling, and comfortable. I am a bit disappointed that they went with an ultra-modern aesthetic for the rooms when the building itself has such an historic, traditionalist feel, but that's just me. The king beds are essentially unchanged (a good thing in my opinion), although they now have padded headboards. Bathrooms have been updated with modern hardware but aren't drastically different. They have also added more wall plugs where possible.

For those unfamiliar with the property, there are suites on the inside of the building (overlooking the central courtyard Conservatory) and suites on the outside. The inside suites are long, come with or without a full wet bar, and have a king bedroom separated from the living area by french doors. Flat screen TVs are in both rooms. The one outside suite (my preference) is wide, does not have a wet bar, but has the same living / bedroom french door configuration. My only real complaint with the room was that it was lacking a small fridge, but that may be because it is not 100% complete yet. Also, there was a huge pink and black Declaration of Independence print on the wall which was hard to ignore, and not really in a good way.

Internet was zippy, a huge improvement over last year, and as always breakfast on XIX is well worth getting, especially for Diamond members.