A special night away

For our 10th anniversary, I wanted to do something special... so we went to St Lucia. So what, we’re talking about The #Kimpton Epic Hotel here but since our journey home from St Lucia was a nice 27-hour layover I was keen to enjoy Miami a little with my wife who had never been here. To be honest, I was 10 years old when I last came, so it was definitely going to be a different experience this time around.

We got to the hotel at around 8:30 pm so we’re keen to check-in and head out to grab some proper, non-plane food. There were 2 staff members addressing customers so we just enjoyed the wonderful lobby which was very grand, in a modern fashion. Eventually, after about 5-8 minutes, we were called over and went through the check-in process which was very easy. We weren’t given an upgrade but I didn’t ask for one either since we were already in a nice water view suite. The guy was very friendly and helpful. We told him that we didn’t know the area and were hungry for some #authenticfood to which he sent us over to CVI.CHE 105. Great choice and I highly recommend it, in fact, I reviewed that restaurant on my flight home. Anyway, we checked-in and were ready to head upstairs, or at least up in the elevators since we were on the 30th-something floor. We got to our door which was a little bit of a task since our roller luggage was dragging in the very plush carpet used between the elevators and guest rooms and then I tried getting into our room but both keys didn’t work! That’s always frustrating. So, down I go and back to the front desk to get them reactivated. Done and done and back up I go. This time they both worked.

After having stayed at a lovely place for the past week I also wanted this night’s stay to be enjoyable. It was! We walked into a nice long but open hallway with the bathroom somewhat open plan and with a faux window to the bedroom. The bedroom itself was very large and had nice furniture with a table and chairs by the patio doors. These doors when almost full width of the bedroom and looked out to the south with views of the city and water to the left. There was a little bit of building construction work going on a few buildings over but we didn’t hear any noise from this, we could just see the huge cranes being used. We had a pretty big balcony too but it was so flipping hot and muggy that we were keen to stay inside with the doors closed and a/c on. That being said, when I was outside I noticed that we were only a few floors above the outdoor bar area which was pretty well populated and had a live DJ. With the doors closed, we didn’t hear much of anything from outside. The furnishings in the room and also this bathroom was really very nice. We had both a walk-in shower and a bathtub along with a double sink sit within a nice marble countertop. The one thing I wasn’t keen on was the sliding door to the toilet. I didn’t appear to close properly and once inside it felt quite dark, cold, and echoey. The bathroom supplies were of a nice quality so I was sure to take home the remaining supplies. Since I don’t get to enjoy a bath too often I was keen to try this one out. It was definitely not suitable for 2 people. Either way, trying to figure out how to close the drain took a little bit of time but when we did and started filling up the bath we noticed that the water was turning lukewarm after barely 1/3 the way through, so this was boding well for a nice bath experience. Needless to say, I got bored waiting and tried out the lovely looking shower. This worked perfectly and had a nice big shower head for complete body coverage.

For the most part, we just wanted a nice place to rest our heads since we were going to head into the city to try some local food and then again in the morning we would go out for breakfast somewhere along the water. So realistically, we weren't in the room that long, but it's nice to have good space and nice views. As in another recent review, I'm right in the middle of 3 and 4 for scoring and since some of these issues are intermittent issues I'm going to be more positive and go with 4-star. The location was really good, we walked or scooted around very easily and there was a good buzz around the hotel. If we come back to Miami I would stay here again, however, there are many more hotels which I need to try first.