Courtesy of Frenchy’s Oasis Motel
Frenchy’s Oasis Motel in Clearwater, Fla., sports a retro paint job. Most of a 15 units have kitchens and dinettes, and 12 come with balconies or square areas.
Quiet, silt dune-sheltered shorelines, bustling open mangle towns, offbeat fishing villages, and sunsets like we won’t see anywhere else in a state: Florida’s Gulf Coast has them all. It also has copiousness of soulless, high-rise, time-share condos and tasteless sequence hotels. So we strike a highway to puncture adult improved options — homey, insinuate hotels and BBs that simulate a sold impression of their towns (and their owners). The result? This greatest-hits list of 10 memorable Florida-coast stays — all with bedrooms for $155 or less, even in high season.
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Cape San Blas Inn
Set on a remote separate of land between St. Joseph Bay and a Gulf of Mexico, a seven-room Cape San Blas Inn feels like a loyal getaway. Maybe some-more divided than some people would like; with 15 miles between a hotel and a nearest town, Port St. Joe, there’s really little selling or dining nearby, nor many party over nature’s offerings. But those are grand: Bobcats, bears, bald eagles and manatees can all be speckled in a area — maybe even from a inn’s prohibited tub, perched during a finish of a private wharf that juts into a bay.
A broad, white-sand beach is all of 500 feet in a conflicting direction, and an even some-more fantastic one is usually 3 miles adult a highway in St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, a 2,516-acre safety whose vast dunes (up to 40 feet) and intelligible H2O make it a tie on national top-10 beach lists. Guests are good versed for exploring a area, with giveaway entrance to 3 canoes, a kayak, beach chairs and bicycles—perfect for cruising along a cape’s well-spoken bike paths and operative off a inn’s robust breakfasts (homemade apple fritters, pressed French toast, eggs benedict, and fresh-squeezed orange extract are all menu regulars).
Most of a guest bedrooms have private porches or patios, and all have mini-fridges and Sleep Number beds — best enjoyed in one of a upstairs rooms, that are quite quieter than a belligerent building options. 4950 Cape San Blas Rd, Port St. Joe, capesanblasinn.com, giveaway Wi-Fi, from $150, breakfast included.
Coombs House Inn
There’s a postcard-perfect peculiarity to a Coombs House Inn, that is widespread opposite 3 pristinely easy Victorian buildings in a heart of Apalachicola. It’s interest isn’t all that startling when we cruise that a owner, interior engineer Lynn Wilson, has worked on big-name hotels all over a universe (Ritz-Carlton, Park Hyatt, Taj), counting both Donald Trump and a King of Morocco among her clients.
With a balmy yellow paint, dark-green shutters, and frail white trim, a motel has come a prolonged approach from a tumbledown vestige Wilson initial speckled on a revisit to Apalachicola with her father in a late 1970s. “When we saw it, we said, ‘I’m going to repair it up; I’m going to uncover people that this little city is smashing and fantastic and usually needs some TLC,’” Wilson recalls. Fortunately, all a TLC that Wilson poured into renovating a ancestral skill (it was built by an area lumber nobleman in 1905) and furnishing it with four-poster beds and antique oil paintings is some-more than matched by a efforts paid to pampering guests.
There’s a daily tea-and-cookies use from 3pm-5pm, booze tastings on Fridays and Saturdays in a parlor, and any of a 23 bedrooms is stocked with robes, nominal bottled water, and Starbucks coffee — and about a third of them even have spin tubs. As for a city itself? It’s finally carrying a impulse in a sun, after years of being famous usually for a glorious internal oysters: This year, Sports Illustrated repository featured Apalachicola and a circuitously St. George Island in a swimsuit issue, and a models and organisation done their proxy home — where else? — during Coombs House Inn. 80 Sixth St., Apalachicola, coombshouseinn.com, giveaway Wi-Fi, from $129 in high season, breakfast included.
Frenchy’s Oasis Motel
Where a Jetsons competence vacation, usually yet a robots. This Clearwater Beach motel non-stop in late 2010, yet it feels true out of a ’60s with a rinse of citrus colors and Mad Men-inspired design. The Mad Man behind it? Owner Michael “Frenchy” Preston, a internal of Quebec and a longtime Clearwater restaurateur who, for years, owned skill subsequent doorway to a before run-down motel.
Attracted by a duration pattern — it’s a classical engine board with a yard pool — he motionless to repair it adult and make his initial incursion into lodging. Now, a façade glows in shades of lemon and orange, while a 15 guest bedrooms competition sunburst clocks, wave-shaped mirrors and old-school traveller postcards lengthened into board prints. Most of a units have kitchens and dinettes, and 12 come with private balconies or square areas. All guest have entrance to a poolside griddle grill, a DVD lending library in a lounge, and a no-coins-required on-site washing room, and one some-more precious perk: discounts during any of Frenchy’s 4 internal restaurants. 423 East Shore Dr., Clearwater Beach, frenchysoasismotel.com, giveaway Wi-Fi, from $129 in high season, breakfast not included.
Low-Key Hideaway Motel and RV
The pointer posted above a pathway to Pat and Cindy Bonish’s Hideaway Tiki Bar (part of their Low-Key Hideaway Motel and RV resort) says it all: “Welcome to a Institute of Low-Key Living.” It’s no fun — after scarcely 4 years spent crisscrossing a U.S. in their RV, collecting ideas about how they’d run a place if they ever stopped traveling, a Bonishes have a art of unwinding down to a science.
The initial element? Make it an adults-only escape. Number two: Keep it casual. When a integrate took over operations of a skill — one of their aged haunts — a little over dual years ago, they lifted a comfort turn (600-thread-count sheets) yet going haute. The 5 shabby-chic bedrooms are flashy with hunks of driftwood and seat from preservation shops and antique stores, and some beds have headboards fashioned from aged doors; any room also has a kitchenette and private bath. The integrate also kept a 4 RV spots (with full hookups) on-site — a curtsy to their possess epic highway trips.
Rule series three: Make a many of what we have. There’s no beach on a property, yet a half-mile vessel float will get we to a private island; restaurants are a brief float divided on a motel’s giveaway bikes; and a sunsets during a waterfront tiki bar are spectacular. So what if they don’t offer food? You can sequence smoothness from a internal pizza corner right to your barstool. Low-key? Yes, yet also delightfully unobtrusive and decidedly Old-Florida. 12050 SR 24, Cedar Key, lowkeyhideaway.com, giveaway Wi-Fi, from $65, breakfast not included.
Mango Street Inn
With years of knowledge using restaurants in both Virginia and Belize, Tree and Dan Andre were some-more than competent to hoop a “breakfast” partial of a BB they dreamed of opening one day in an out-of-date Florida-coast city like Fort Myers Beach. They were reduction prepared to understanding with a state of a skill they bought on that town’s tropical-sounding Mango Street in 2008.
“We didn’t comprehend it was a moment house,” Tree says. She can giggle about it now; after months of gutting and renovation, a couple’s welcoming motel is a form of place where guest accumulate around a glow array in a yard and splash booze during night or lay together underneath a arbour for Dan’s Cajun-inflected breakfasts (say, shrimp jambalaya cakes with boiled egg and chipotle tomato salsa on top; less-spicy options are also available).
The 6 suites — 4 one-bedrooms, dual with dual bedrooms — all have private bathrooms, full kitchens, and internal seat a integrate has amassed (or made) over a years: patchwork quilts, ceramic-tile-topped coffee tables, wooden animal carvings. Well-behaved pets are allowed, and competence find friends in Cookie a dog and Thomas and Hector a cats. Said guest Jim Palmer of Minnesota: “Where else can we uncover adult for breakfast barefoot, with your dog, and be served a epicurean meal?” The beach is a little 199 stairs away, and a motel provides a car for guest to transport beach chairs, umbrellas and coolers. 126 Mango St., Fort Myers Beach, mangostreetinn.com, giveaway Wi-Fi, from $145 in high season, breakfast included.
Naples Courtyard Inn
Staying on Naples’ bustling Tamiami Trail has a advantages: easy entrance to restaurants, shops (the chi-chi waterfront Village on Venetian Bay selling center), art galleries and even a Naples Zoo. The trade-off? Mostly cookie-cutter sequence camp that competence as good be anywhere. Except, that is, for a Naples Courtyard Inn, a 76-room family-run mark with a graphic clarity of community.
Nora LaPorta’s in-laws bought a place 6 years ago and revamped usually about everything, giving a bedrooms a frail new demeanour and adding botanical-themed artwork, slab vanities, mini-fridges, and microwaves. LaPorta acts as hotel manager and de facto amicable coordinator; don’t be astounded if she swings by to let we know about an unpretentious mixer in a thatched-roof chickee hovel by a pool. Or usually uncover adult there in a afternoons, when guest accumulate for uninformed iced tea and review after a day during a city’s 10 miles of sandy beaches, usually a 5-minute expostulate away. 2630 Tamiami Trail North, Naples, naplescourtyardinn.com, giveaway Wi-Fi, from $99 in high season, breakfast included.
The Peninsula Inn Spa
Leave it to a (former) veteran jazz musician to cobble together a particular motel with usually a right change of gloss and improvisation. Its refined, regretful facilities — a on-site spa, dual restaurants and atmospheric veranda — make The Peninsula a favorite site for little weddings and family reunions. But there’s also a funkier side to this landmark building, that Alexandra Kingzett and her father Jim bought in 1999 when it was a boarded-up shell.
To start, it has a colorful history, carrying served as a hospital, a nursing home and another hotel during opposite points in a past. (The strange extra-large conveyor was designed to fit gurneys.) Some contend there’s even a proprietor ghost, Isabelle, a former ancient after whom one of a inn’s restaurants is named.
The 5 suites and 6 guest bedrooms are themed around British colonial outposts —Bombay, Katmandu, Casablanca — and flashy with seat hand-carved in Indonesia. And, of course, there’s music: A blues bands plays in a yard Tuesday nights, Wednesdays move a jazz-piano ensemble, and Alexandra herself has been famous to put on occasional performances during a piano in a bar. You can even get in on a movement yourself, during a open mic night hold any other Thursday. 2937 Beach Blvd., Gulfport, innspa.net, giveaway Wi-Fi, weekend rates from $119 in high season, breakfast included.
The Sun and Moon Inn
Time was, a many colorful thing we saw on a revisit to Matlacha (pronounced matt-la-SHAY), a little island fishing village in a Pine Island Sound, was a quite colourful redfish. But over a final dual decades, a island has sensitively been remaking itself as a tucked-away humanities enclave, with a fibre of galleries set in converted fishermen’s cottages and a dozen or so brightly-painted waterfront restaurants — many of that accommodate attainment by kayak. (Tip for a sweet-toothed: Try a dip of homemade coconut during Great Licks Ice Cream.)
Fishing is still Matlacha’s primary draw, though, and there’s no improved home bottom than a Sun and Moon Inn, a five-room board on a Matlacha Pass Aquatic Preserve, where kayakers, boaters and jumping mullet keep adult a solid upsurge of traffic. Curt Peer, who owns a motel with his sister, is happy to lot out fishing tips or lead guest on moonlit vessel trips, and rents out kayaks for $50 per day. Three of a bedrooms have balconies with views of a pool and prohibited cylinder (both open 24 hours), and all have private baths, mini-fridges and inexhaustible building plans. In Peer’s standard laid-back style, a continental breakfast is accessible via a day, and there’s an Italian griddle right subsequent doorway and a griddle griddle for guest to prepare adult their catch. 3962 NW Pine Island Rd., Matlacha, sunandmoon.net, giveaway Wi-fi, rates from $125 in high season, breakfast included.
Watergarden Inn during a Bay
With a slew of just-opened humanities attractions — a glass-sheathed Dali Museum, a Morean Arts Center’s Chihuly Collection — and a snazzy new post on a approach (projected execution date: 2015), The Sunshine City of St. Petersburg is experiencing something of a renaissance.
Appropriately enough, a century-old building that houses Watergarden Inn during a Bay emerged from a rebirth of a possess this month (March 2012), interjection to a efforts of new owners Bill Witt, an designer from Seattle with a gusto for collecting engaging pieces and an eye for clean, welcoming spaces. The 14-room motel nearby a city’s downtown waterfront mixes out-of-date charm, complicated pattern and a genuine Florida feel: An antique radio anchors a lobby, while a balmy sitting room pairs wicker armchairs and a friendly leather lounge with brightly colored finish tables and a residence guitar for a musically inclined. Witt also commissioned a code new swimming pool on a half-acre property, to go with a existent deck, garden, and second-floor patio, and renovated a residence subsequent doorway to enclose dual 2-room suites and a owners’ quarters.
All guest bedrooms have private baths, flat-screen TVs, and in-room Keurig coffee makers; many also have king-size featherbeds and double-size spin baths. 126 4th Avenue Northeast, St. Petersburg, innatthebay.com, giveaway Wi-Fi, rates from $155 in high season, breakfast included.
Wisteria Inn
Miles divided (in spirit) from a Margaritaville stupidity of Panama City Beach — yet still tighten adequate to dump in for cooking if you’d like — Wisteria Inn offers a mellow, grown-up choice to a open mangle atmosphere you’ll find over down a beach. (Kids underneath 12 aren’t allowed; pets are.) Owner Bronwen DuKate took over a motel in 2001, giving any of a 14 bedrooms a possess tone palette or theme: The South Beach room is all orange immature and turquoise, with paintings of pleasant fish, while a Serenghetti room incorporates animal-print bedding and forged wooden masks.
The bedrooms aren’t outrageous — generally a cheapest ones in a behind — yet all have private baths, coffee makers, mini-fridges and tile floors. And there’s some-more to see outside, anyway. Within a inn’s walled pleasant garden, you’ll find a decked-out pool area, a palm-shaded koi pool and a prohibited tub; a quiet, purify widen of beach is usually opposite a street. Breakfast isn’t partial of a understanding here, yet nominal mimosas (at noon) and booze (in a early evening) are. And given DuKate doubles as captain of a 45-foot yacht, C’est Si Bon, it couldn’t be easier to arrange an outing on a water; she customarily takes groups of guest (minimum of 4) out on a vessel for $65 a person. 20404 Front Beach Rd., Panama City Beach, wisteria-inn.com, giveaway Wi-Fi, rates from $109 in high season, breakfast not included.
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