Santa Barbara Bargain! (Days Inn Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, USA))

Member Name: flodombey

Product:	Days Inn Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, USA)
Date:	02/07/09 (29 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Price, location, clean, comfy rooms, plenty of parking

Disadvantages: Noisy guests

This hotel is a great place to stay on a budget in Santa Barbara, as my friend and I discovered whilst doing a road trip around California. Well located, comfortable, clean and with allocated parking, plus only minutes from the 101 Pacific Coast Highway it is an ideal place to stay.

We had booked online a couple of days before while in Arizona, we knew we were headed to the town of Santa Barbara and this place came out as one of the cheapest places to stay for 3 nights. The room rate was $110 per night which at the time worked out around £55, split between the two of us this represented a bargain price but we knew with a chain hotel/motel like Days Inn we could be guaranteed of a decent room and facilities.

Firtly on driving into town it is very easy to find the hotel, located on Castillo St which is the road you will end up on if you come off the 101 at the correct junction (225), driving towards the ocean front the hotel will be on your left but you cant miss the big, ubiquitous Days Inn sign out front. Plenty of parking is available in the courtyard style car park which the rooms go round the outside of.

We stayed in one of the many ground floor rooms which were standard motel style, looking onto the car park. The room was bright and clean with a large window letting in plenty of light, we had a standard Queen room which meant one VERY large and incredibly comfortable double bed, a large TV unit with sky channels, a clean bathroom with a great power shower and coffee making facilities along with a fridge and air con as standard.

There was plenty of space for our cases and a wardrobe if we had wanted it - by this point we had been living out of cases for so long we had got used to it and stopped hanging anything up so we didnt bother. The fridge was very useful for keeping water and soft drinks in, there is a vending machine situated near to the rooms between the car park and the lobby and an ice machine as is standard in most US hotels.

The hotel has a jacuzzi area but it is small and was always occupied by a family with a room right next to it while we were there, in any event the sea is just a block away and we didnt intend on spending more time than necessary at the hotel so this didnt bother us. The jacuzzi area looked clean and well maintaind though and was evidently popular with guests.

The lobby and reception area is where they also provide a continental breakfast which is included in the room rate, here you could get pastries, muffins and coffee on a daily basis until late morning, you just wandered in and helped yourself. This was a nice touch and enabled us to save a few dollars going in to town. The staff were incredibly friendly and helpful, to be honest, in my experience it is very unusual to encounter bad service in the states so this was fairly typical but is always appreciated.

From the hotel it is literally a few minutes to the seafront continuing down Castillo St, when you reach the sea front if you turn left you will be walking down West Cabrillo Blvd which is the main seafront road and which leads to Stearns Wharf (the pier) and State Street which is the main street full of shops, bars and restaurants. You can even take a trolley down the length of this street if your feet are tired but to walk from the hotel down to State Street will take 15 minutes at most and is a very pretty walk.

The only problem we had with this hotel was noise from other guests on two of the three nights we were there. This was a group of college kids who literally partied in the car park outside their room until the small hours, we were no early birds ourselves but they were still going strong at 3am when all we wanted to do was sleep. The second night this happened a man from one of the other rooms went and shouted at them and thankfully they quieted down a bit!

For the rate we paid this was a fantastic budget location, ok so its not on the seafront but only a few minutes away. If you have a car the parking is a great benefit as most of the seafront 'boutique' hotels here dont have any so its worth staying off the main strip if you need it.

Try and book in advance online to get the best rates and be assured that for a popular and trendy beach town like Santa Barbara you probably wont find anything so close to the sea at such a good price. I am very likely to go back to Santa Barbara again in the future and this is definitely where I will be choosing to stay.

Summary: A great and highly recommended budget hotel very close to the sea