Majestic Hotel South Beach

We stopped at Majestic for lunch, and the food was good. The Cuban sandwich was especially tasty. We ordered pineapple juice and a couple of other drinks, but the Sprite had an odd taste, maybe because it was heavily chlorinated.

We arrived at 5:30, but had to wait half an hour to get into our room because they hadn’t finished cleaning it in the five hours since the previous guests checked out. The room was roomy, though the floors sloped, there was dust everywhere, especially in the filter, and the sheets kept slipping off the bed. The woman at the desk was impersonal. The site also didn’t mention that nearby roads were all closed or that there was no parking close by. The best option we found cost $70 and was three blocks away.

Great value for a classic Art Deco room. It was clean, the AC worked well, and there was even an air-cleaning ionizer. The bathrooms could use an update, but the rooms have that old-school feel. There aren’t many frills, though do you really need them?

The location is awesome, but the first-floor restaurant blasts music until 1 a.m., then there’s kitchen cleanup afterward. From my room I could hear everything: music, conversations, dishes being washed, footsteps. It felt like there was only one layer of drywall between me and the kitchen. The bathroom smelled really strange too.