The Penguin Hotel

The person who answers the phone sounds aggravated, talks fast and was difficult for me to understand. I tried twice to get concrete info. about parking, but was told public garages are one block from hotel. The President, sister hotel on Collins street behind the Penguin has $48/day valet parking. There are now NO cars allowed on the Penguin’s section of Ocean Drive, despite pictures on their website. We couldn’t see any place to drive into or at the President to park, kept driving and found the parking garage at the next left (going South). It was $20/day! We parked there, went out to the street with our luggage, bags, etc. It really wasn’t too bad, just have to get them up about 4 steps to get inside to check in. There’s an elevator to get to the rooms. Our king room and bathroom were clean, and small, but adequate. There was a safe in the closet. Included with the room were coupons for breakfast and 1 drink at the happy hour for the two of us. The breakfast was great for us, and had many things that most people would enjoy: scrambled eggs, bacon one day, sausage the next, pastries, mini waffles, whole fruit, cereal, milk, juices, water and regular coffee (wish they’d had decaf). They did have hot chocolate packets and teabags, but never saw hot water, and I didn’t ask since I didn’t need it. Also, one issue came up the second day, and a young man in the kitchen quickly responded to it and did a great job! We tried to do the happy hour to use our coupons, but we were 20 minutes early before it opened, so never used them. Our room air conditioner wouldn’t work when we checked in, called the front desk. The maintenance man came within 20 minutes and got it working. It stopped working again overnight,and we called again. Once again a different maintenance man came and explained that the air conditioner being set at 69 wouldn’t come on because the outside temperature was around 59. He set it lower and it came on. We just set it lower until it cooled off a bit, then put it back on 69. We would potentially stay there again after getting the low-down on certain things, and for the price. The location was pretty good for walking a lot. There’s a pool on the top of the President hotel, and tried to go see it our last day, but the elevator wouldn’t go up there. Just wish the weather had been a little warmer to hang out by the beach and water, but still enjoyed the nature, some good food and a walking Art Deco tour to hear some history of the area. This area was more of a party atmosphere than we care for, lots of scantily clad women, etc.