Beach Drive Inn

This quaint B&B on the shores of Tampa Bay is in the heart of downtown St. Pete’s gentrified, upwardly mobile tourist district. A dozen excellent restaurants, art galleries, ice cream parlors and boutiques were a short walk from this hotel’s front door.

If you’re looking for peace and quiet, look elsewhere. Our room (The Vinoy Suite, above the hotel’s garage and three feet away from the HVAC unit on the roof outside our window) was on the alley behind the hotel, and had sunroom windows facing three directions: the road, the alley and the neighbors. Every car stereo, baby, chatty passerby and unhinged dog’s yelping bounced off the buildings surrounding our room and rarely relented. On three of the seven evenings we spent here, loud conversation between two women smoking below our suite’s sunroom woke us up around 1am and didn’t subside for hours. It was the hotel’s staff. I know because I opened the window, looked them in the eyes and asked them to STFU. A pity, because once you get past the classic aroma of old Florida inside the lobby—equal parts Sunshine State swamp, mildew, old sewer pipes and perm fluid—Beach Drive Inn is a pretty cool place.

Nothing

It was staying in a run down prison