As my cab driver drove up to the Carlton, he warned me not to come or go from the Inn after dark. He said "not nice" people gathered there then. However, I was soon forced to break my resolve to stay put after dark, and I didn't have any trouble. Some tipsy individuals often congregated around the front of the hotel and in its sparse lobby, but none of them proved to be dangerous.

After the cabbie's warning though, I worried that I might have booked into a real fleabag of a place. That concern was heightened by the appearance of the lobby. The clerk, who was rather brisk and unhelpful, was in a glass booth that looked bullet-proof. Except for that booth, the only other artifact in the big concrete expanse of the lobby was a ratty-looking couch. The place reminded me of the ground floor of a high-rise parking facility. A few shady characters went reeling through the lobby as I was checking in.

But then my room proved to be a pleasant surprise. The carpeting was rather grungy, but other than that, everything was clean and functional. No bedbugs - no stains. The room was spacious, and actually had some design elements that I missed in more expensive hotels. For example, I could actually reach the bed lamp light from my lying position in bed - something that oddly, you rarely get in hotels/motels. Too often, you have to get up out of bed to turn off your lights.

There is a restaurant connected to the Inn that's open late hours - so you don't have to venture out into a generally closed downtown to find dining at night.

Plus, the Carlton's location was ideal, within easy walking distance of the heart of downtown Winnipeg. At $65 a night, this place offered possibly the best value of all the places I stayed on my cross-Canada junket by Greyhound.