Tag: California travel

West Hollywood, California, USA ~ The Sun Rose Hotel

June 2026

We typically start a post with an explanation of our destination. What took us to Hollywood?

We were coming to LA to attend a family wedding in the Santa Ana foothills and thought we had a good excuse to linger a few extra days in Southern California. Reading Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies made me quite interested in LA – it really is a fascinating city – and you’ve also become more curious about it.

We’re trying to systematically explore different nodes of the city. Hollywood topped our list this time because we wanted to be in a place that felt like a real neighborhood but was also close to the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA) where we could see the newly opened David Geffen Galleries.

There are loads of hotels in Hollywood. What led us to The Sun Rose?

We weren’t set on West Hollywood, which is different than Hollywood (here’s one realtor’s take on the difference); we just wanted something in the general vicinity. As we started looking at hotels, our top 2 choices were both in West Hollywood: the Sunset Marquis and The Sun Rose. Truth be told, the Sunset Marquis looked terrific, but it was getting ready to undergo renovations, and we weren’t sure how that would affect our stay, so we opted for The Sun Rose.

Two more notes about the location: We (well, you) really wanted to get rid of the rental car when we got to LA from Orange County, and West Hollywood is a walkable neighborhood. It is a treat to be carless in LA.

And…we didn’t plan for it, but it happened to be Pride Week in West Hollywood during our stay, and we arrived just as the parade was wrapping up. The neighborhood was alive with celebratory and positive energy and some truly terrific outfits.

I got a phone call from the hotel a day before we checked in. Do you remember that?

I do. You were having an extended conversation with a staff person, Amanda, who was checking in on us before our arrival and letting us know that an upgraded room had become available. The phone call was a sales pitch but also quite personal. Amanda asked us where we were from and what was bringing us to LA, and she seemed to give an honest assessment of the room choices we had. All to say, it was a high-touch conversation – far more than getting an email with an upgrade offer.

When we checked in early, Amanda was working, and she remembered us. One of the rooms in our category was ready, but she advised waiting for the one she had chosen for us. We appreciated the personal attention, and later in the day, she sent us a bottle of Prosecco with a handwritten note.

At check-in, we also met Adrienne the concierge, who recommenced a great Mexican place for dinner and advised that, yes, we absolutely needed to get a table at Musso and Frank’s if at all possible. We’ll admit that when it came time to actually make the reservations, we were on our own; Adrienne was a phone call kind of gal, and we could make quicker work of it booking online, but she was lovely nonetheless.

You probably also remember the great shampoo confusion. This was another instance of staff members going above-and-beyond to help.

Yes, I was getting ready to get in the shower and noticed that two of the three bottles in the shower were labeled shampoo (the third was conditioner). The two of us tried to figure it out – they were two different colors, and we guessed one was body wash, but we weren’t sure – so you called the front desk to ask. In the meantime, the housekeeping staffer doing turndown and the person delivering the Prosecco arrived and tried to help us solve the mystery. In the end, the housekeeping manager figured it out – the hotel was in the midst of a change to a new aroma – and he brought us the missing body wash. This was small-stakes stuff, but we appreciated everyone pitching in.

It was worth getting the right shower condiments because the shower was a treat. What about other features of the room?

We had a junior suite on the 7th floor with a view onto Sunset Boulevard. In fact, right across the street was the famed Comedy Store. The Art Deco theme was well-executed, and we could see the care given to keep up a design choice that can be high-maintenance. The room was spacious and light-filled, and we particularly enjoyed sitting at the window-side bistro table watching the Sunset Boulevard action below. The floor-to-ceiling windows were a highlight.

The room had far more storage than we needed, comfy robes and fluffy slippers, a giant bed with extra-soft pillows, and a coffee machine that did espresso but also hot water. We also spent time on the couch watching the Tony Awards (we admit — kind of an interesting choice while spending time on the opposite coast from New York, but it was fun nevertheless); we appreciated having the separate seating area.

How about the rest of the hotel?

When we walked in, we immediately recognized the Portal Icosahedron sculpture by Anthony James. Your university has one as well, and it’s a favorite among everyone on campus. It was a fun coincidence, and it made us think we had, for sure, chosen the right spot.

Other than having breakfast in the hotel restaurant, the only other thing we took advantage of was the rooftop pool and bar, which were terrific. On check-in day, while we were waiting for our room to be ready, we passed the time in the shade with a mid-afternoon cocktail. A few days later, you spent some time cooling off in the pool; it’s more of a soaking pool than a swimming pool, but the view out over LA is captivating; it’s the star of the show. Swimming laps would be far less interesting than gazing out over the edge of the pool to locate LA landmarks.

The hotel also has a music club that has hosted legendary musicians as well as up-and-comers, a spa, and a bowling alley just for guests. We didn’t have time to check those out, but they’re nice features.

Anything else?

LA is a fascinating city with loads to explore. In our more recent visits, we’ve been taking little bites out of it, focusing on a particular node and trying to find a hotel that represents that node. The Sun Rose felt very West Hollywood: playful and fun with a little old-school glamour. We saw small indications that things have slowed down a bit for the hotel – e.g. the lobby bar was only intermittently open, and two dining options – the ground floor café and the rooftop restaurant — didn’t have much energy. (The rooftop used to be an Asian-influenced Wolfgang Puck restaurant that was reportedly quite popular, and the London Telegraph review also highlighted the café, which now has a new name and seems to be operated by the hotel.) With that said, West Hollywood has no deficit of places to eat and drink, so we didn’t go hungry.

Stay details:

What we did; where we ate:

  • Drinks on the hotel rooftop
  • Browsing for reading material at Book Soup
  • Dinner at El Compadre (Adrienne’s recommendation — flaming margaritas, which we only admired from afar)
  • Breakfast at the hotel
  • Art and architecture at LACMA and the David Geffen Galleries
  • Laughs at The Comedy Store — standup with Jay Leno, Kevin Neelan, Harland Williams and many more
  • Dinner at WeHo Bistro
  • Breakfast at Laurel Supply (apparently too cool for a website)
  • Walking tour: West Hollywood to Wilshire Boulevard
  • Lemonade at the Original Farmer’s Market
  • Fossil viewing at La Brea Tar Pits
  • A ride in a Waymo
  • Pool time at the hotel
  • Dinner at The Musso and Frank Grill

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Santa Monica, California, USA ~ Shutters on the Beach

July 2024

This weekend trip to Santa Monica served as a condensed re-do for a Southern California vacation we had planned the year before but had to cancel last-minute. For that longer holiday, we had chosen Santa Monica Proper, which is still on our list (it looks terrific), but because we had only one full day in California, we wanted to be closer to the ocean. Shutters on the Beach – as the name implies – is directly on Santa Monica beach and very close to its famous pier, so we figured it would give us the quintessential LA experience. It ended up being a California hotel in Cape-Cod clothing, a combination that worked just right for what we wanted.

From LAX to the beach in no time

Our flight arrived at LAX at 10:30 in the morning, and we were at the hotel by 11:15. (Worth noting: For any visitors to LA trying to fit maximum fun with minimum time in a car, Santa Monica is a good choice.) With such an early arrival, we were prepared to drop our bags and return later for check-in, but the hotel had a “partial ocean view” room ready to go. After getting a helpful explanation from the staff member at the front desk about the difference between “partial ocean view” and “ocean view” – an explanation that included a hand-drawn diagram and his personal assessment of both choices – we decided to go for the room that was ready so we could get settled and get on with our weekend.

There’s a reason it’s called Shutters

The route to our room took us from the street-side lobby – a space we didn’t appreciate right away but later understood why it’s called the “living room” – up one elevator to the pool level on the third floor, down a corridor, into a second elevator, up to the sixth floor, and then around the corner to our room on the opposite side of the horseshoe. Upon exiting the first elevator, we stepped into an inside/outside space with – you guessed it – shutters separating the in from the out. At that time of day, the shutters were wide open, and a cool breeze coming in from the ocean blew through the corridor. When we left the second elevator, we were happy to see that its hallways were the same with guest rooms on one side and shutters to the outside on the other.

It didn’t take long for the shutters in the hotel – literally counting every one we encountered – to become a bit of a game for us. We discovered that navigating through the hotel was best done via stairs whenever possible, and those stairs led to many combinations of spaces divided by shutters. Reading this may lead you to think that the hotel took the shutters theme a little too far, but it seemed to work both from an aesthetic sense and a practical one. The shutters provided multiple options depending on the day’s weather: shade without stuffiness, air flow without wind and heat, and the perfect level of darkness for sleeping in without sleeping all day. It felt as though a member of staff – invisible to guests – was in the background constantly adjusting the shutters to match the current conditions.

Cape Cod on the Pacific

The hotel’s website advertises it as “an acclaimed Santa Monica beach hotel” that “recalls the quintessential cottages of Cape Cod.” We’ve never spent time in one of these cottages, but the guest room and common spaces did make us feel like we were staying at the home of friends…in all the best ways. Shutters features nearly 200 rooms and suites, so it isn’t a small property – certainly not a cottage – but the design and décor were personal and intimate. Our partial ocean view room on the 6th floor had a perfectly lovely view of the ocean from its sliding doors and balcony. (A second note: Santa Monica beach is quite wide; an ocean view room is still a good distance from the ocean even if it’s right on the beach). And while we loved looking out to the beach and ocean, we spent as much time studying the contours of the building – its shingles, balconies, stairs and, yes, shutters.

The room’s interior felt non-corporate with bookshelves holding books we actually took time to peruse; a large round bedside table with a piece of coral, a push-button alarm clock, and a copy of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea; and a slipcovered wingback chair next to a Chinese ceramic lantern. Some of the furniture had a few scratches and dings, but as we settled into the Shutters vibe, we began to question whether it was purposely distressed – an effort at making us feel like visitors to a friend’s house and not anonymous hotel guests.

When we first arrived in our room, it was set up for an extra guest – a kid – with a rollaway bed and a kid-sized robe and slippers. We’re not sure whether the rubber whale bath toy was for the kid or for all guests, but we appreciated the effort the hotel took to welcome its younger customers even though we were only a party of two. We’re pretty sure our early arrival got in the way of someone else’s request, but after a quick call to the front desk, everything was whisked away to, we assume, another room for the party of three.

Our favorite part of the room was the opportunity it provided to sleep on the ultra-comfortable bed with the shutters only partially shut and the fresh, cool air coming in all night.  We also enjoyed coffee in the morning on the balcony (the first morning, we made it ourselves from the Nespresso machine; the second morning, we went down to the living room where it was already brewed and waiting for us). And the deep tub, also separated from the bedroom by shutters, so accessible to the fresh air, tempted us in. When, by the way, is the last time you’ve seen a hotel supply a real candle and matches next to a tub?

In our room, we encountered a few things we would change in a perfect world. The aforementioned Nespresso machine was tucked away in a cabinet with no obvious place to set it up if we actually wanted to make coffee. With that said, the housekeeping staff noticed we used it on our first morning and made space for it on the desk for day 2.  (Note # 3: The hotel staff was exceedingly attentive and friendly during our stay; a stand-out moment was a staff member noticing us sitting on the balcony in the afternoon and handing us two cans of water across the railing from an adjacent balcony.)

Other small observations: The mini bar and the cabinet near the bath with lotions and potions were secured with a zip tie, which seemed like a mismatch for the clientele the hotel was clearly trying to attract. And the deep tub with the real candle had jets that didn’t work. This didn’t really bother us, and the hotel was quick to respond with a restaurant credit when we reported it upon check-out, but it seems like something that should be on a punch list with each room turnover.

A beach bike ride, time by the pool, and an art scavenger hunt

We didn’t have much time, but the hotel helped us make the most of it. Our first adventure was a bike ride along the Marvin Braude bike trail. The hotel set us up with two cruiser bikes, and we headed south toward Venice. We intended to take another adventure north but didn’t manage to fit it in. 

If you’ve read other blog entries from us, you’ll know that we love the ocean and the beach, but we aren’t avid swimmers and sunbathers (with the exception of time spent in the Caribbean Sea in Puerto Rico). More often than not, on warm-weather vacations, we end up at the pool under the cover of an umbrella, and the Shutters pool was a really nice spot to recline, have a cold beverage, and catch up on some reading. When we were there, it was full of kids – cute kids – so we didn’t actually get in the water. But we loved the energy of the space, the view out to the beach and the ocean, and the big fireplace that made us want to come back when the weather would call for sitting on a lounger in a warm sweater.

On the day we checked out, we made time to do a self-guided tour of the hotel’s art collection. When we first arrived, we noticed a handful of terrific pieces hanging in the lobby but only later came across a booklet with a self-guided tour of 30 prints from the likes of David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Cales Oldenburg, and Alex Katz. (We’re now realizing that there is representation from only one woman: Yayoi Kusama.) We had a lot of fun wandering through the living room, the hallways on the main level, entries to the restaurants, and the meeting rooms to view and read about each pieces. It was like having a semi-private visit to a museum; we could linger as long as we wanted, and the only people we encountered were focused on other things, but they seemed to recognize and appreciate what we were up to. The art tour was the perfect diversion before we checked out and headed back to the airport and back to real life.

Stay details:

What we did, where we ate:

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