HotelChatter

While in Key West for our recent grownup spring break, we stayed at a delightful old downtown hotel called La Concha. Our choice of lodging was the result of a blind Priceline bid of $175 on a three-star Key West hotel, and I'm pleased with where we ended up. The room was clean and well appointed, the pool and patio area was sunny and inviting, and we were just steps from all the restaurants, bars, and pie shops that Cayo Hueso is famous for.

Location, Location, Location
For us, location is a priority, and in Key West it doesn't get much better than the corner of Duval and Fleming Streets. La Concha (or "the Conch," as our taxi van driver called it) is a short stumble from Mallory Square, the Hemingway Home, and Fort Zachary Taylor Beach, the holy trinity of Key West tourist spots. When your hotel is that centrally located, you can pop in and out of your room as needed throughout the day, taking advantage of a private VIP chillout zone in the middle of the action. For us, it was a great home base from which to sally forth and seek our sunshine, seafood, and drinks, and we came and went as if it were our personal apartment, with maid service.

Room Reaction
As is always the case when I'm checking in with the Scarlet P (for Priceline) on my reservation, I was afraid we'd get some lousy room in the basement between the elevator shaft and the mop closet. To our pleasant surprise, our second floor room was just off the pool deck, with a sunny view of potted palms and frolicking bathers. The room was small but not cramped, and everything was tidy and in working order.

Amenity Madness
The bed was comfortable and had lots of pillows (more than I needed, but my wife, Jenn, liked them), and on the night stand there was a radio and CD player that we did not use, opting to flip through the basic cable channels on the flat-screen TV instead (one night The Untouchables was on). There was no refrigerator, but there was an ice machine just down the hall, which I made use of many times. The bathroom was pretty standard, the highlight being a big sunflower-style shower head. I like when hotels have a better shower than I have at home.

Drinking and Dining
On our first evening, we took the elevator up to "The Top," the hotel's famous outdoor rooftop bar and lounge. Due to building codes implemented after its completion, La Concha is the tallest civilian building in all of Key West, and the view from the seventh-floor terrace is spectacular, with a 360-degree panorama of the island and a front row seat to the famous Key West sunset.

A crowd of three dozen or so had gathered to watch the big orange sun drop behind the sea, and the bar did a brisk business serving cans of beer and pink and green frozen drinks. We arrived just in time to witness the sunset, which was lovely, and then we took the stairs down to the ground floor, avoiding the throngs crowding into the elevator.

Public Spaces
The main lobby has a high ceiling, wicker fans, and potted palms amid dark leather couches, giving the place a breezy, tropical vibe. It would make a good shooting location for some noirish movie, if you could keep the people wearing Crocs and fanny packs out of the frame. Off the lobby is a Hemingway shop that sells books and souvenirs.

The hallways and common areas are decorated with framed black-and-white historical photos of Hemingway typing on his infernal typewriter (the damn thing misspelled too many words, he complained) and beaming fishermen posing next to their trophy catches. The hotel restaurant is called Jack's Seafood Shack, and it looked perfectly decent, but we never dined there. There's also a Starbucks in the hotel, but I frequented nearby Island Joe's Coffee for my java fix instead.

Pool Scene
The swimming pool and sun deck are located on the second floor, and while it wasn't as posh as some model-filled infinity pool at a luxe resort, it did the job. Arrive early if you want to claim a pair of deck chairs, because the place fills up fast. If you don't care about the chair, you can sit on the edge of the pool like I did and get a foot massage from the water jets. It felt good to sit in the sun and splash around in the water. Pop songs bleated politely out of the speakers and the bartender kept the blender humming.

Hotel History Lesson
La Concha has a colorful history, even for kooky Key West. It was opened in 1926 by an investor named Carl E. Aubuchon who saw the need for a luxury hotel to accommodate the increasing number of tourists and businessmen arriving on the newly completed Overseas Railway. In its salad days, the hotel welcomed scores of luminaries, with such famous guests as Fidel Castro and Harry Truman dropping in for work and pleasure. Its most famous resident was Tennessee Williams, who completed A Streetcar Named Desire while staying in a "two-room suite on the top of the hotel." Hemingway was also no stranger, and he makes reference to the "La Concha Hotel up high out of all the low houses" in his 1937 novel To Have and Have Not.

As the years passed, visitors began frequenting newer properties, and La Concha fell into disrepair. By the mid 1980's, the only part of the hotel that remained open was the rooftop bar, as the rooms had been boarded up in a vain attempt to keep out vagrants. Its fortunes turned around in 1986 with a major renovation by Atlanta architect Richard Rauh, who used old blueprints to return La Concha to its former grandeur. It's now one of the tonier properties on the island - though far from the most expensive.

Bottom Line
Overall, we were quite happy with La Concha. It was a clean, affordable oasis amid the chaos of Duval Street, and it offered us everything we needed for our island adventure. It was not without its flaws - our bathroom always smelled like cigarette smoke, and the staircase by the elevator was littered with three painted fingernails that nobody cleaned up the whole time we were there - but at a total of about $200 a night including taxes and fees, it seemed like a pretty good deal.

We'd be glad to stay at La Concha again. Next time, however, I'm bringing a mini Igloo cooler, because those in-room ice buckets can only chill two bottles of beer at a time, and that's just not going to work.

[Photo/Video: Victor Ozols]

Related Stories:
· La Concha Key West [Official Site]
· Key West Spring Break Part 1 [Jaunted]
· Key West Spring Break Part 2 [Jaunted]
· Key West Spring Break Part 3 [Jaunted]