P.S

Is Maestri Towers really old? as most of the sites say it's new but reviews people have left say it is old!

Help please

Since Oaks Maestri is on the corner of Bathurst and Sussex -- one of the oldest parts of Sydney -- it may well be an old site, but I think it has been all redfurbished and looks pretty modern. If it still looked traditional, I would have taken more notice of it when I walked by.

I am sure it is a perfectly good hotel to stay at, but it is one that I have a beef with -- well, I have a beef with lots of the "majors", because I see a lot of false advertising going on on their webpages -- because of its stated distances to tourist attractions. This is what Oaks maestri has to say:

Town Hall Station 1 mins

Chinatown 1 mins

Darling Harbour 2 mins

Convention Centre 5 mins

Circular Quay 10 mins

The Rocks 10 mins

This is obviously the distance if you have one of those rockets strapped to your back; you couldn't do it by taxi, that's for sure, unless you arranged to close down all the traffic lights and evacuate the city. My own feeling is that they should tell you the walking times, since transport times vary so much according to public or private and the time of day/night. Now, I don't have the accurate measuring devices available to the proprietors of Oaks Meastri, but I would suggest that the following might be reasonable walking times:

Town Hall Station: 6 mins

Chinatown 1 minute (no argument with them there)

Darling Harbour 5 mins

Convention Centre 10 mins

Circular Quay 40 minutes

The Rocks 40 mins

Hyde Park Inn isn't as close to Chinatown or Darling Harbour as Oaks Meastri, but it's in a nicer part of Sydney, closer to the Park (naturally), to the better shops, and to the historic areas of Macquarie Street. Without having seen the inside of either hotel, I would choose Hydde Park Inn, unless you can get a deal at Oaks which compensates for its lack of measuring skills.

Thanks for that you do wonder about some of the facts they write.