ADGE Apartment Hotel

Housed in a white, grey, and red-brick building with tangerine highlights on a leafy slope in Surry Hills, the ADGE Apartment Hotel looks like a trendy apartment building from the outside. Inside, it looks like an art gallery (or perhaps a playroom for hipster toddlers). The open lobby has grey concrete floors and high white walls covered with colorful graffiti-style cartoon images, featuring colorful characters and some familiar faces, including Olive from Popeye and a Mickey Mouse-type character with aviator shades playing a fantastical saxophone. The elevators are equally trippy, with multi-hued color-changing lights reflecting on glass and mirrored paneling that give them a kaleidoscopic feel. Guests -- who tend to be long-term visitors with cash to splash in return for spacious lodgings -- are welcomed with a herbal longevity tonic based on Taoist herbalism.

The ADGE Apartment Hotel is located in the trendy Surry Hills neighborhood, in between the offices of a media company and the Cambridge Hotel. The main entrance is narrow and there's not a lot of signage, so it can be easy to miss at first. The Sydney Opera House and The Rocks are a 10-minute drive away. Bondi Beach is a 15-minute drive from the hotel while Taronga Zoo takes closer to 20 minutes. The Sydney Airport takes a minimum of 15 minutes by car (without traffic) and can also be reached by the Airport Line (T2), which stops at Central Station. The trip takes around 30 minutes door-to-door. 

All the apartments at the ADGE Apartment Hotel have two bedrooms and two bathrooms, an open-plan living and dining area, a kitchen, and a washer and dryer. There are six apartment types, categorized by their floor level and views. Cityscape Apartments have views toward the city center, while Eastside Apartments look out on eastern Sydney. Apartments on the top floor have a split-level arrangement with two levels of open windows and each has a small stairway leading up to a separate room. All rooms are colorful and full of light, with vivid rainbow-hued carpets in rooms and common areas coupled with vintage-style Union Jack emblazoned oversized fridges, giving them a Swinigng '60s (Or Austin Powers) ambience. Floor-to-ceiling windows open up onto balconies, letting even more light in, and a mix of charcoal and white sofas, tables, chairs, and other furnishings help balance out the brightness of the spaces. All apartments come with modern kitchens with flat-top four-burner stoves, brushed chrome microwaves, espresso machines, and a huge selection of cookware, plates, and cutlery. Long balconies have glass-panel railings giving them an open feel. Bedrooms have ceiling-mounted flat-screen TVs, closets with safes, ironing boards, and multiple storage compartments, and individual air-conditioning units. Sleek bathrooms have low vessel sinks that sit below narrow ledges that act as the only counter space and long vanity mirrors. Shower/tub combos come standard in all bathrooms, and toiletries by Appelles Apothacery are included. 

The ADGE offers a reasonable amount of on-site services for an apartment hotel. Although there's no spa, guests can get their hair cut and styled through Ziggy's In-Room Hair Styling right in their suites. Wi-Fi is free throughout the property, which is unusual in Sydney, and there's a basement parking garage where guests can park for a fee. The hotel also has an on-site restaurant, Baccomatto Osteria, which serves Italian cuisine and tapas in an industrial-chic space, and while it's open for dinner every night of the week, the restaurant is only open for lunch on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.