SAN DIEGO PILLOW TALK:
COOL PLACES TO PUT YOUR HEAD
Story and photography
by Eric Anderson & Nancy Allen

Today’s hoteliers try to guess what styles tomorrow’s guests want. Opinions included the cutting edge thoughts of Ian Schrager who believed that travelers at the end of a long day wanted Studio 54-like excitement in their bedroom. Maybe it was Schrager who wanted excitement; he had spent 13 months in prison for tax evasion. Anyway, he guessed wrong: tastes change and his flagship San Francisco hotel, Clift Hotel, went into bankruptcy in 2003.

San Francisco hotelier Bill Kimpton had a different approach. He felt guests were intimidated by grand hotels. He created a collection of boutique hotels where the concept was comfort -- and value.

What a simple but great idea. No wonder Kimpton Hotels prospered. As if learning from this, San Diego entrepreneurs have recently given travelers a choice of interesting places to put your heads at night in America’s seventh largest city. It turns out some of our city’s best getaways are our city’s best kept secrets but San Diego Road Runner found them for you.

Tranquility amongst the bustle

The 23-room Little Italy Inn www.littleitalyhotel.com typifies the concept Small is Better. It’s on Grape Street just below I 5 but you won’t be heading towards the Interstate you’ll be meandering down to, arguably, the most interesting location in the city: Little Italy.


One of the few functioning Italian business communities remaining in the Americas, Little Italy www.littleitalysd.com has recovered from the collapse of the West Coast tuna fishing industry and the blight that followed and is now actually growing. Locals and tourists are discovering the wild color and Bohemian excitement of places like India Street, restaurants and stores are moving in and, more important, descendants of the original Italian families are returning to their ethnic roots.


The inn was built in 1910 at a time when the population of the city was 40,000. Little Italy grew with San Diego and at one time 6,000 Italian families lived in what is now a 48 square block area. Boston’s North End is bigger and had 44,000 Italians living there in 1930 but our Little Italy is seven times larger that the ones in New York or San Francisco. The inn is in easy walking distance of downtown attractions like Horton Plaza and the Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego Bay and its Harbor Cruises, and the San Diego Trolley and San Diego Train Station. Though walking may be foreign to San Diegans, when you stay at this inn you can get there from here. The rooms are comfortable, prices are reasonable and there’s a modest continental breakfast. So come and stay in a village.