Not a real hotel but rather a condo complex, Telluride Lodge is right in town, and within easy walking distance of the main street, the ski lift, the gondola, etc. It consists of four rows of condos set in a pleasant green space with trees, picnic tables, and gas barbecue grills. It seemed that many of the units were occupied by owners and long-term renters, and so the property was pleasantly quiet. There's a hot tub, ample parking, and a ski locker for each unit. I believe this was actually the very first condo complex in Telluride, and the architecture is mid-80s funky, with odd peaks and jogs and various-sized windows.

So far so good! The bad part is that because it's not a real hotel, the office hours are limited. If you call the office after 5 your call is routed to another nearby property where the staff seem to know next to nothing about Telluride Lodge. When I booked our room online, my confirmation page gave me an 800 number to call to arrange to get our key. The operator (presumably at the "other" property) assured me that the Lodge office would be open till 8 on the day of our arrival. We pulled up at about 5:15 to find the office locked, with a sign on the door instructing us to use the combination we'd been given to open the key box and get our key. We of course had no combination, since we'd been told the office would be open. The sign added that we could also use the phone to call for assistance, but the phone was dead. The sign included the phone number, but not the area code--thus making it impossible for us to use our cell phone. Just as we were about to make an irate call to hotels.com, another couple arrived, and they (O happy day!) had the combination for the key box.

We also had some bad experiences with the apartment itself. The floor plan was spacious, with a full kitchen, living area with fireplace, dining nook, bedroom, and deck. One of the windows was missing a crank handle and thus couldn't be opened, the fan in the bathroom was loose in its housing and rattled the very walls, there was no towel rack for the bath towels (important to be able to hang these up, because you get new towels only every three days), and the handle for the flue in the fireplace slid out very nicely, but didn't actually open the flue. We discovered this last problem when our cozy little fire filled the entire apartment with wood smoke.

This last disaster fortunately occurred before 5 pm, and so we were able to summon the maintenance guys. Here we return to the good--they were prompt, knowledgeable, and incredibly nice, as was every other staff member we encountered. They were not, however, able to fix the fireplace, and they told us that the non-opening window couldn't be fixed because it's so old that the missing part is no longer available. (They also gave us some spicy gossip about the condo's owner, but all that will remain a secret between us and them . . . )

As for the ugly, the decor in our unit was pretty awful. The maintenance guys said that the burlap wallpaper and teal blue plush carpet were probably part of the original 1980s furnishings.

All in all, however, the Telluride Lodge provided us with cheap, comfortable lodging (cheap for Telluride, that is). Because every unit is different and individually owned, you can't really know what you'll be getting in the way of decor, appliances, mechanical malfunctions, etc. We probably would try to get a different unit if we were to go back there again.