Courtyard by Marriott Solana Beach

More than anything else, the reason I was at Marriott's Courtyard hotel in Solana Beach was that for once, I wanted to forego the clubs and restaurants and shopping malls and just spend a couple of days lazing on the beach. Plans, as per my luck, often go haywire, and this one did too - Cause the beaches are locked down after a shark attacked and killed someone. So what do I have left to do?

Poke around the hotel, taking note of the business center, the outdoor pool and whirlpool, the two spa tubs and the excellent fitness center with its treadmills and the bicycle and the weights, all of which were of absolutely no use to me. Drive up and down Highway 101, but it was Solana Beach I wanted to be in, not the hundreds of miles of beautiful sandy beaches up and down the coast (well, if you can't have it, then that's all you want, or something like that...), so in short order I was back at the Pavilion - the coffee shop in the Courtyard - mulling my options.

I give up, and go back up to my room, which thankfully has everything you might need to help you forget a disaster of a weekend vacation. Complimentary high speed internet, cable TV with pay per view movies, refrigirator, microwave, coffee and tea maker, hair dryer, iron/ironing board, bottled water, ergonomic chair and workdesk. Having taken two baths in a couple of hours, coming and going, in the admittedly magnificient granite bath with spray jet bathtub and jacuzzi, I spent some time gazing out the patio, fiddled with the climate control settings, had a couple of beers, watched some CNN, got bored with a mind-numbing discussion about superdelegates and switched to ESPN, then fell asleep on the sofa bed.

When I get up, its already late in the evening, and time to take the half hour drive to San Diego and the Gaslamp Quarter, and party away the sad memories of a day spent in absolute luxury at the Courtyard by Marriott Solana Beach doing absolutely nothing, with a closed beach in plain sight.... For which I had to pay $179 plus taxes. At least the parking was free. Solana Beach hotels - Great. Solana Beach sharks - Very bad. Can I file suit against the shark for spoiling my vacation?

Farmers Daughter Hotel, Beverly Hills

If you're in LA and wanna sleep in the warm embrace of the Farmers Daughter and eat with the local TART, then you want to go to 115 S Fairfax. Easy, does it...Farmers Daughter is the name of a hotel, and TART is the restuarant at said hotel. That said, what you first thought might as well be true, because the place isn't the kind of hotel you'd want to take your wife and kids to. They went through an extensive renovation, and its way better now than a few years back, when it was a cheap $40 motel for wannabe actresses working part-time and struggling to pay the bills. Now its a not-so-cheap $210 hotel for people who just don't know better. Photo credit: Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Its across the street from CBS Studios, with the Grove Shopping Center, third street boutiques, the farmers' market and Museum Row all within hailing distance. The surroundings are actually quite rundown, the hotel building looks like an apartment complex in a poor neighbourhood and this is definitely not the LA that a tourist wants to see, or stay in. More like a commercial District with lots of prosperity 'inside' the buildings, but the streets in the area around the hotel are not quite up to expectations. For the price they charge, you can book yourself a comfy room at lots of really decent and upscale Beverly Hills hotels. But lots of people visit CBS for shows and tapings and it is quite convinient for them to stay overnight at Farmers Daughter.

The garishly painted thin walled rooms at Farmers Daughter are as sodden as the hotel itself, with barren floors and bare minimum amenities like a DVD player with a few free DVDs and rain head shower in the bathroom, the pool is tiny and the valet mandatory, even though there's no real necessity. The only redeeming factors for this dumphole are the surprisingly friendly staff, the relatively new and clean beds, sheets and towels, and the numerous restaurants in Beverly Blvd's restaurant row where you can likely expect to get decent food. So, if you're dead tired, have some urgent business to conclude in the Fairfax area, which is likely to run late into the night, you might want to give the Farmers Daughter a test run, but that's just about it. Room rates start at $184 plus taxes.

Info: 115 S Fairfax, Los Angeles CA 90036; (800) 334-1658; www.farmersdaughterhotel.com

Omni Los Angeles Hotel

The Omni Los Angeles Hotel is downtown LA's cultural bunker in more ways than one. For starters, its located like a WWII machine-gun turret on top of South Olive Street's Bunker Hill. Secondly, said bunker is supposed to a strategic location, with a birds-eye view of the surroundings, and easy access to everything important in the neighbourhood - The box-like Omni has a pretty decent view of the entire area and is within walking distance to everything that has anything to do with art or culture in downtown Los Angeles (worth visiting, i.e.).

Speaking metaphorically, the Omni houses an inordinate number of art and theatre lovers at any given time, and these cultural stormtroopers fan out every evening to conquer the nearby enemy forts like the Museum of Contemporary Art, the L.A. Music Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Having laid these cultural camps to waste with their ponderous opinions and sissy sensibilities, our dashing stormtroopers then return to the Omni base camp late at night for rest and supplies.

Lastly, the Omni is just a short drive from LAX, in case the sissy army has to beat a hasty retreat out of LA because of some percieved slight (You have no idea how competitive the art world is). If all that was Greek to you, just ignore it. Sometimes I get these flights of metaphoritis, and if writing bad metaphors was a crime, I would probably be doing a long stretch as a serial offender. The only things worth any use in all that fancy prose are that the Omni Hotel is centrally located at Bunker Hill and a lot of theatre goers prefer to stay here. Lets move on to an investigation of why aforementioned sissies actually love this place, location notwithstanding.

Its a well known fact that these artsy types have oversized egos and love to be treated like they're God's own gift to the common rifraff, even if their own mothers have problems remembering their names. And the Omni slyly takes full advantage of this weakness, and bends over backwards to make their guests feel like royalty, with a lot of pampering and the staff scurrying about fulfilling your boneheaded demands which would make even your ever-so-loving mother come after you with a meat cleaver, had you perstered her in the same way that the staff at the Omni are subject to.

To boot, the Omni offers services and amenities and spacious well-equipped rooms and can be considered to the standard bearer of Los Angeles family hotels. And then some. The list of amenities include an outdoor heated swimming pool, full service spa, lounge, restaurant, fitness center, concierge, business center, 24 hour room servie and an on-call physician, laundry & dry cleaning services, complimentary car transport for any location within a 3 mile radius, and last, but not least - The Omni Kids Program. The restaurant mentioned above is named Noe, and its become quite a big hit, with an appealing mix of American cuisine tinged with an oriental flavor.

The 453 guest rooms and suites at the Omni are elegantly refined, airy, spacious and pleasing to the eye, designed to appeal to an upscale and urban mindset, with television with on-demand movies, wi-fi, floor to ceiling windows offering sweeping views of Bunker Hill or California Plaza Watercourt, coffee maker, stocked refreshment center, hair dryer, iron & ironing board, in-room refrigirator and a complimentary copy of the Los Angeles Times.

If you book a Club Room (slightly bigger than the other rooms), you also get access to the Club Lounge, a free continental breakfast, evening cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. Room rates start at $269, with the Club Room clocking in at $309. A Business traveler room with special add-ons like a workdesk goes at $289 and a Junior suite which could double as family accomodation at $359.

Info: 251 South Olive Street Los Angeles CA 90012; (213) 617-3300