Hotel Citrine, Palo Alto, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel

Stayed here a few times for work. The hotel is nice and the staff are very friendly. Not a gym, but otherwise its a good spot if you're in the south bay area.

We pulled up to the hotel and did not see anywhere to self park. When I asked the valet, he confirmed that they only offer valet, which was fine. I asked if they had electric car charging, and he said yes, it’s included with the cost of valet. I confirmed that I wanted my car charged overnight. Inside, we were greeted by a friendly and accommodating receptionist, who checked us in and asked if, as a platinum member, I would prefer breakfast or 1,000 points. I asked if there were vegan options and she said there were many, but I was welcome to decide if I would prefer points or breakfast in the morning. My six year old and I went up to the room which was more spacious than expected with beautiful furnishings and a huge balcony. In the bathroom, one of the lights flickered so much that I couldn’t use that light at all. Since it was fairly late, I got my son into the shower and toweled him off. He was cold so I put the room robe on him, until he complained that it was covered in hair. Upon closer inspection, I saw that there were, in fact, a ton of curly black hairs stuck to the fabric. He took the robe off and had more gross black hairs all over his body. I cleaned him up and then I put him to bed. When I climbed into bed, I noticed that the sheet smelled like a normal hotel sheet but the pillow case smelled unusually floral. I swapped it for another pillow on the bed, but I am not convinced the pillowcases (and maybe even the sheets) were clean—maybe it was a previous guest’s lotion? I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if I was being paranoid and, since my son was sleeping, I covered the pillow with an extra shirt to ease my mind in lieu of calling the front desk for new linens. Needless to say, I did not rest well wondering if I was lying in someone else’s dirty sheets. Additionally, one of the bathroom lights would turn on randomly throughout the night, so I would have to get out of bed to turn it off again. Super frustrating. The next morning, I found a small chunk of wadded up paper (looked like toilet paper) in the sheets. I am hoping that the sheets actually were laundered but who knows. Edit: on reading another review, another guest mentioned their room was “heavily deordorized.” Perhaps that is what I smelled, thinking the sheets were dirty with a previous guest’s scent. However, I don’t know. Since we were only staying the one night, I showered and decided not to mention it to hotel staff. My son and I headed to breakfast. The service in the restaurant was mid—one order was wrong, my food was fairly good, and there was some confusion about the breakfast tickets the front desk had given me. When I asked if the meals we had ordered were covered the tickets, the server did not respond and just left the bill on the table. I assume the tickets were fine because I didn’t see a room charge for breakfast. At the end of our meal, I checked my phone app to ensure the car was charged to see that it was still at 43%. We were supposed to be leavin