noplasticshowers

What a difference a day makes! First of all, we have to thank Kevin who has his finger on the pulse of San Diego. He has been to the Lafayette before for dinner and knew what a cool place this is. And is it cool? Yes.

The lobby and the main bar are excellent. Quirky and strange and fun.

I was assigned room 226 after only a slight delay. The hotel is “eclectic cluttered” flavor, but somehow the design sensibility works. I guess it is possible to make things hang together by building a collage of most everything.

226 is rectangular, but it doesn’t feel like a hamster cage. About the only thing that needs work is the noise level. 226 faces the street and it is a bit noisy (for non city types anyway). The hotel did manage to get super quiet for about four hours around midnight when the power was taken down for construction. The quiet woke me up.

The hotel did its homework and greeted NPS with personalized stationary, a note about birthday, and a bottle of prosecco.

The difference in level of service between this hotel and the previous destination is like night and day. Thet have the NPS demographic nailed here.

I mean, just look at this bar. Apparently there is one of these in each room.

Home negroni? Why not.

Underberg?!

And the shower? Not at all plastic.

It was time to unwind from the meetings and talks. So down to the bar to await the arrival of my dinner companions

An expert-level Negroni with clear huge ice. Yes please.

Dinner at Quixote was very interesting (and expensive but well worth the price). The restaurant is a restructured church moved up from Mexico. Really interesting. The cocktail program is top notch and willing to play. We started with a CR#2 of course and moved on to a Paloma and some fernet.

Dinner is served tapas style. The lamb belly on mole was delicious.

Stringy cheese fondue.

NPS has never had cactus before.

After a brief stop by Heaven we headed to the game room to play some games. Fooseball!

We made a relatively early night of it, stopping in at the pool bar for a Paper Plane nighcap before crashing.

And then it was morning. Enough time for a leisurely breakfast before heading to the airport and back to Virginia.

All in all, we barely scratched the surface of the Lafayette. (We did learn to avoid the road side.) And we tried out a few of the many options here for fun. Suffice it to say, we will be back. Five showerheads and a dip in the pool next time for this excellent hotel.