The Beverly Laurel

So I took some time in picking out our hotel. We're not made of money, so it had to be affordable, but I am too picky at this point in my life to stay somewhere totally crappy. And we needed a good location--easily accessible to the myriad places we wanted to go. And a nice bed, fun space, etc. were all in demand.

At first, I wanted to stay at the Standard Hotel on Sunset. It's a part of a hip chain, kind of like the W. But at $250 a night, it was a bit too pricey (but certainly not crazy, at least by Philly hotel standards). We ended up staying instead at the Beverly Laurel.

It's extremely well located on Beverley Boulevard in Fairfax (kind of south of West Hollywood and east of Beverly Hills). There was parking, a diner downstairs called "Swingers" (that was used in m"Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion") and each room had been redone with cute colors and movie star decor and a kind of retro vibe. It was well priced (about $140 a night) with free parking and internet.

The BL is an old-school Hollywood kind of place with a pool in the middle that all of the rooms face via a balcony. The only downside of this was that the windows all faced the pool, so there was little light when you drew your blinds for privacy. The bathroom was huge though and had been recently renovated and included a really long stall-style shower with three shower heads a bench (I think this was meant for people to use when shaving their legs--which we did not do, but it was nice to know the option was there). And look who was over our toilet! -->

All in all, for others looking to travel to LA, I recommend this spot. It was like 20 or 30 minutes tops from everywhere we wanted to go. And the staff was really nice. Parking was tight but never a real problem. The room was clean and had a fridge and great bathroom. The TV was lacking, the internet was not free and the linens weren't much better than like a Ramada Inn. Those smaller things would represent my only reservation about recommending it--if it didn't force the prices to get way jacked up, I'd recommend to the owners a small investment in those kinds of quality of stay types of things.