Essex House Hotel Rating: 3.0 Pearls

South Beach, Miami, Florida

For the price, I expected nothing more than someone sliding me a room key beneath a bulletproof-glass window. But a porter was outside to gather my bags the minute the cab stopped, and there were multiple people at the front desk to help me get settled.

I arrived at noon (check-in was, alarmingly, at 4 p.m.), so my room wasn't ready. But they offered to store my bags, showed me where I could change to use the pool and recommended a few nearby lunch options (basically just some cheap delis around the corner).

Each employee has their hometown written beneath their name tag. (No one who lives in South Beach is actually from South Beach; they're more likely from New York.) That way, says our receptionist from Brownsville, Brooklyn, I'll see their name and where they're from, and it'll start up a pleasant little dialogue -- "You're from Brooklyn? I'm from Brooklyn. Let's be friends."

Throughout my stay, everyone I encountered was friendly, helpful and entirely competent. Believe it or not, that's actually saying a lot in Miami.

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Close (enough) to the beach -- I was pleased with the location, especially as I had sufficient space between my bed and the blasting bass from Ocean Drive or Washington Avenue (on the other side).

Also, the Essex is close to some of my favorite places like the Wolfsonian Museum and my secret favorite places like Fat Burger. (The name says it all.)

Ground-level courtyard suite

Without request (though perhaps because I waited four hours to get into my room), I was upgraded to the Courtyard Suite, which had a huge Jacuzzi tub.

The bed was great: not too hard, not too soft, and it had plenty of pillows.

The room was clean, and I accepted a few countertop coffee stains in exchange for an in-room coffee maker. (A message to hoteliers everywhere: A simple coffee maker in the room can endear us to your hotel forever, or at least from about 8 a.m. until noon.)

The chairs and love seats were clean and plenty comfortable, but the molded-wire barstools felt like a catcher's mask. (I assume that, at one time, a cushion was attached.)

My suite was ground-level (as half of them are), so I felt a bit exposed, especially through the bathroom window. Drawing the curtains was the only alternative, but this cut out all the natural light, and the room became a bit too cavelike for my taste.

The 42-inch flat-screen TV was hooked up with extremely specific music channels (Adult Alternative, New Wave Hits From the '80s, etc.), which worked well enough for me (forgiving the absence of a CD player or iPod dock).

So, to put all this in context, and to explain the bizarre, dancelike movements my neighbors spotted from the courtyard -- I was caffeinated, unable to sit comfortably and listening to "Purple Rain".

Tiny "splash pool"

The pool was tiny, just a "splash pool," which is a term invented in Miami to describe 4-foot pools that close at 8 p.m. and do little more than magnify a AAA star rating. When I arrived, three people were in the pool, and that was all that could fit (though, to be fair, the old biker dudes with hairy shoulders were about twice the size of most people in South Beach).

I caught the tail end of the Dolphins game at the Essex Lounge. The music was turned off so that we could nod to John Madden's inane commentary without overstimulation, and I indulged in far fewer bottles of Bud than everyone else in the place. But the atmosphere was lively and the crowd good-natured. All in all, it was better than any of the nonexistent sports bars in South Beach.

There was a pretty good spread for the free Continental breakfast. Or so I heard: When I got there at about 9:30 a.m., only decaf coffee was left.

Sure, I found a few stains on the lobby couches (most likely the result of the Continental breakfast -- I definitely spotted some jelly drippers), the pool had some dirt and dead-bug action, and the rooms had a few marks on the walls, but the Essex was as clean as or cleaner than some of the most expensive resorts in South Beach.