The house is a large, old California Craftsman home that is a wonderful toss back to the early 1900's. The house, the grounds, are all charming. This is the type of place you'd want to stay in forever. This is a wonderful place to stay, much better than the other places around Venice.

The rooms range from small to spacious. The suites are large and beautiful. There are fresh flowers in the room and each room has cable (!), It's a quiet inn, albeit, the scene outside the alley (Speedway) is noisy with revelers coming home from the bars until very late hours. There's nothing you can do about that.

It's just so close to being a first rate B&B. And perhaps at one time it was, but there are so many little details that have gone untended by so long, for lack of a professional inn keeper staff, or perhaps more frankly, money.

Here's what's missing:
1. the hot & cold water spigots weren't working in the upstairs shared baths.
2. there is no fan in the upstairs bathroom with the shower.
3. the breakfast was cold at 9:00 a.m. when we went down. we asked if they could heat it up, the young innkeeper said 'no, we have no microwave.'
4. having cold food set out is against all public health regulations. It wouldn't take much. a heating tray, chafing dishes.
5. they have a Senseo coffee machine out in the afternoon. However, they leave the little Senseo packages out as is, rather than putting them into more attractive glass containers.
6. the lightbulbs in the closets are burned out.
7. Wall paper in several of the rooms is warn and bears the markings of a leaky roof.
8. We never met the manager. But the staff seems young, enthusiastic, but largely untaught, inexperienced and entirely in need of direct supervision in order to teach the the art and skills needed to be an innkeeper. The management would be smart to employ young people going through an HRM course at Cal Poly Pomona so that they may have experience.

I am a huge fan of B&B's. And so it hurts when I see something so unique literally not shining at its' best. Like I said, it wouldn't take much. Just loads of attention to detail with consistency and a determination from the 'many' owners to come up with a comprehensive financial plan on how best to put the money back into the house.

Would I stay there again? Yes, but, I do hope they read this and come up with some of the easy solutions I've just given.