Hope you all had a great weekend! It’s a new week and thus time for a new blogpost. This time, I’ll be writing about a local hotel in Marriott’s Autograph Collection, the Hotel Paradox in Santa Cruz, CA. For those who don’t know, the Autograph Collection is marketed as a collection of properties unique to each destination. It’s not as nice as SPG’s The Luxury Collection (which is five star properties instead of four star), but it’s still a very nice collection of hotels. We went to visit the hotel last December just prior to my fiancee’s birthday.
The Hotel Paradox has a very nature-ish theme, with a lot of brown and beige color tones throughout the property. A lot of the decorations focus on a forest-type theme as well.
The check-in desk was actually the trunk of a giant tree. During check-in, the staff was friendly and professional. The hotel is a bit spread out, so it was a walk to our room, but inside, the decorations and room quality were quite nice.
The room, bed, and bathroom were nothing incredibly outstanding, but they were still very nice. All of the furniture and decorations were of good quality as well. As a gift, they gave us some fruit and nuts. One additional point that I loved was the fact that they had Illy Coffee. I don’t see it too much, but when I do, I definitely make myself a cup.
We arrived a bit late, so we decided to go down to the restaurant/bar for some drinks and a bite to eat. We had some glasses of wine with some calamari. It was fantastic. I would definitely recommend! Also, because it was winter, there was barely anyone there, so it was a nice, quiet, and relaxing atmosphere. In fact, the food was so good for the snacks, we decided to stay there and just order some larger plates for dinner.
The next day was nice and sunny. We started off the morning with breakfast at the hotel. It wasn’t anything special to be honest. It was pretty standard as far as hotel breakfasts go. I had some scrambled eggs.
After breakfast, my fiancee wanted to check out the pool. The pool was quite nice, with lots of seating. It was decently warm, so she was able to lie out in the sun for a little bit while I did some work. I was also able to get some nice pictures. The cabana and lounge areas were nice, and there was a huge sequoia (I think) tree providing some shade. I can imagine this spot being pretty lively in the warmer months.
After lounging around by the pool, we checked out and then went to go explore downtown Santa Cruz. Thankfully, it was just a short Uber ride away. It was quite nice, there was a bunch of restaurants, but we weren’t too hungry. There was a nice book store, Bookshop Santa Cruz, where my fiancee got a book that had been signed by Amy Tan. We also visited a cool, southwestern-style furniture shop.
Afterwards, we did the obligatory trip to the Santa Cruz pier and boardwalk. We walked up and down the pier in the late afternoon. The scenery was beautiful, and the crowds were mostly gone from earlier in the weekend. We had some fish and chips at Ideal Bar & Grill. It was a nice end to the weekend as we watched the sun going down before heading back to the hotel to pick up the car and head back home.
Platinum Bryan 