Away Nights

Inside, however, designer Jacques Garcia, the darling of those who like their hotels intriguing rather than minimalistic, has taken over. He famously says, and repeats it on the hotel website, why do things simply if you can make them more complicated? So here he has taken a jelly-fish theme, and repeated it throughout the 91-room hotel.

Wall-set lights are like jellyfish, complete with lots of yard-long hanging strings of beads imitating tentacles. Little velvet stools in the lobby lounge area have bead fringes that twirl when you swing them around. At the entrance to Vix restaurant, which leads straight off the lobby, there are real white jellyfish, in a tall tank with four glass walls. At the back of the long reception foyer is a colorful mural dating back to the hotel's 1937 beginnings, when it was designed by South Beach's most famous architect, Lawrence Murray Dixon, then 36.

Someone in a white suit had, outside the hotel, insisted on taking the keys of my white car (of course I checked, soon as was discreetly possible, that he was in fact a hotel employee and not an opportunist). After that, everyone was in black, and universally hip, fit and welcoming. I was given the key to room 507, a 770 sq ft Ocean Suite which ran the entire breadth of one of the arms of the C, overlooking the sea. The colors were - dark wood floor with black and orange striped carpet, cream walls, cream curtains, orange leather furniture with lots of metal studs. As you enter, you have living area ahead to the left, with dressing area off to one side. From the living area, proceed right to the bedroom and through that to bathroom.

There are curtains between these 3 areas. A shower, with glass door, is set back from the bathroom and the toilet, someone confusingly to a nocturnal wanderer, is set at the rear of the living area. I had flat screen televisions, Bose equipment and the hotel's own toiletries were in the shower and by the infinity-edged tub that prominently occupied most of the very-public bathroom (had I had the time, I could have bathed watching the Atlantic, with water pouring out over all four sides of the tub and into the hidden soakaway, but then I could also have invested $5,000 in the offered in-room Evian bath, the tub filled with that stuff.)

There were two more wall-set jellyfish lights either side of the big bed, which was jolly comfortable. I liked the fact that instead of a standard minibar there was what was called a BIG bar, with half bottles of spirits, including the trendy 42-Below vodka, and a Snoozers and Losers hangover cure from Anatomicals.com. There was a shopper button on the telephone, right through to Neiman-Marcus.