Oceana Hotel Santa Monica

I stayed at the Oceana from Sept 21 through Oct 2 for the business trip I was on, and I have to say I was most pleasantly surprised and delighted by the hotel and staff. Most of them called me by name from Day 1, and it had the look and feel of a much more expensive hotel, but was much more reasonably priced than any of the nearby properties.

I had a great Lanai suite room that overlooked the pool; the only downside was the back windows looked out over an alley (complete with some local homeless people at night) - so I'll know next time to ask for a room that looks over Ocean Avenue (to the beach).

The Lounge was a small-plate format place that served a European style breakfast buffet - I ended up several nights eating there when I didn't feel like walking the 5-6 blocks to the 3rd Street Promenade area.

The only down-side I have to report was that they referred me to the Exhale Spa at the Fairmont for Spa services and it was not at all good and very overpriced. As an alternative, I contacted the nice folks at Greenbliss EcoSpa, and they sent someone to me who was excellent! (I'm going through Physical Therapy for a ruptured cervical disc, so deep tissue massage is part of the PT - tough requirement, but someone has to do it!)

If you need a home away from home, you can't do much better than this. You'll feel right at home here. If you ever wanted to live on Melrose Place, this is it, but even better because Pacific Palisades Park is right across the street and the 3rd S...read entire review at TravelPost.com