Palos Verdes Inn

We found a great place to eat right next door, The Original House Of Pancakes, not IHOP. Breakfast was delicious and reasonably priced, especially the potato pancakes, though we waited 30 minutes for a table on Sunday. They close at 2pm. A few doors down, the corner bakery was good for coffee, pastries, salads, and sandwiches, and the Bull Pen, a steakhouse that’s been famous locally for many years, is nearby too. There’s no restaurant or breakfast service at the hotel itself. We usually come to Redondo Beach at least 6 times a year, but our regular hotel was booked, so we tried this one. Our fourth-floor room had a king bed and cost $119 for Saturday night, $133 with taxes. Staff were friendly and helpful. The private balcony had patio chairs and a small table, and the coast view was incredibly panoramic and romantic. We’ve paid a lot more to stay across from the harbor over the years and never had a view like this one. The room had a large, comfortable armchair, desk, internet, TV, small fridge, coffee, iron, and hair dryer. The bed was comfortable, though it came with only 3 pillows. We called the front desk, and more were there when we got back from dinner. There’s no gym, but there is a nice outdoor pool. The beach is a half mile walk or bike ride away. Saturday night’s rate was only $119. We’ll definitely stay again.

The location is convenient for Redondo Beach businesses, though the actual beach is about a mile away on foot. I’ve stayed here several times for work. Staff are friendly and the rooms are spacious, but the beds are just fair and the pillows are weak. The building has a 50's feel and tired facilities. Some details make the room awkward: the desk is tiny, and its lamp runs on a motion sensor, so I had to get up every few minutes to switch it back on. There’s no interior decoration. The TV is a tube set from the '90's. The bathroom looks straight out of the 50's, with tiny gray-and-white floor tiles, an old-fashioned medicine cabinet, and a commercial toilet like one in a bus station. The free-standing, pedestal-mounted Oriental-style heat pump is strange, looks like R2D2, and is noisy like a Chevy small-block engine in the room. The internet is awful, more like dial-up: 380 kbps down, 180 up, up to 4 sec. latency, lots of jitter, and 5% packet loss, to be technical about it.

The friendly service and safe neighborhood were nice, and the beach is close. From the patio you see the parking lot and then the water in the distance, not the beach. There’s a small fridge, thank god, but no microwave, and just a tiny one-cup coffee pot. The place is old and the rooms feel grimy, though the sheets and toilet were clean. The carpet wasn’t comfortable to walk on barefoot, the bed was hard, hard, hard, and the walls are paper thin. I’d spend the extra $20 and stay at the Best Western 2 doors down.

Older hotel that needs repairs. The beds were good and firm, but the WiFi was horrible, less than 1 MB per second, and my cell data was faster. Odd clientele.