Villa Acacia

The place was empty, but they put me in a dingy, ugly back room with no balcony and wouldn’t upgrade me. They didn’t help and seemed not to care. The bathroom had old black mold. The shuttle was $65 USD and they weren’t flexible. There was no customer service, the safe didn’t work, and the door was flimsy.

The breakfast was tasty and the coffee was good. The place seems a little outdated, but it has its own style and charm. You can choose between cabins and regular hotel rooms, and Hermosa Beach is a five-minute walk away.

Andrey was an amazing host and helped me from beginning to end. The bungalow was my favorite, especially the rocking chairs out front. The pool was super clean and had some shade, too. It’s close to the beach and good places to eat, and the gardens are beautiful. Waking up to birds chirping was lovely, and breakfast was delicious.

Being close to the beach was the only good thing about this reservation. The room was extremely basic and definitely not worth the $153 USD I paid through Priceline. Booking was difficult: about 30 minutes after I booked, someone on WhatsApp asked me to send all my credit card information. I wasn’t comfortable sharing it that way, but they said they wouldn’t hold the room without it. At check-in, I waited about 15 minutes for someone to come to the desk. Parking meant going through the hotel’s “back alley,” so I drove a few blocks back up to the main road, the highway, to find the access road. Around 4 am, children and adults outside my door woke me up playing, laughing, and talking loudly. I had to ask them to respect people who were sleeping. At 7 am I was woken again by workers and maintenance staff making noise and talking outside my room. In the rush to leave, I forgot my prescription glasses, and my wife left her gold earrings in the bathroom. When I contacted the hotel the next day, after realizing my glasses were missing, they said the items hadn’t been found in the room. I asked several times for the hotel manager’s name so I could make a formal complaint, but no one gave it to me. Breakfast was included, but don’t order the American breakfast: it was a dried-up hot dog with a piece of cardboard toast. My wife said hers was okay. We packed up and checked out.