This hotel is perfect location if you want to be amongst a lively or relaxing setting. The choice is yours. The journey from Miami airport takes 40 - 50mins and cost around $80 with tip. The people staying in the hotel varied from our age range (late 30s) up to retired. The main stay was probably business customers, but this was due to a big conference on going in Fort Lauderdale at the time of our stay.

This hotel is one of the oldest in Fort Lauderdale and provides a lavish interior with very smart decoration. The tiled floor sets the tone as it is in pristine condition. I am not going to say much about the hotel as it is going to be extended dramatically with a further 200 rooms from September 2008 which will take about 18 months. When completed they are aiming for 5 star status. We stayed in a tower room over looking the city towards the Atlantic. Originally we had a room looking over the city (back of tower block) which was not so nice so go for an upgrade with balcony facing Atlantic which cost an extra $20 a night. The pool is located across the street by the river which is about a minutes walk from the rear of the hotel. Nice pool with shaded areas, loungers, tables and supplied towels. Food/drinks can be ordered from the pool and delivered between 12pm - 4pm. At times we had the pool to our selves. The shallowest point was 3ft 6 so if you have yound kids who can not swim this might be too deep for paddling.

The older part of the hotel had smaller rooms which seemed ok for business use or a short stay, where the tower block had spacious rooms which I would recommend if you are staying more than a couple of days or you want good views.

Basically the hotel is on the E Las Olas Blvd which provides individual designer shops and good restaurants. The Cheese Cake Factory is attached to the hotel and provides enormous meals and found this to be the norm with most restaurants we visited. We ended our holiday sharing starters and main courses as normally one plate could feed two easily. The shops are quite expensive being designer, but having a strong pound against the dollar made some purchases good value. If you are looking for the ultimate shopping experience locally then a short taxi ride (20-30mins $30) will take you to Sawmills. It took us from 10 am - 7pm to walk around and that was not visiting every shop. If you are looking to fill up a suitcase with clothes, goods, etc then this is the place to go.

The i trolley (Small yellow air conditioned bus) was the way to travel as it cost $0 - 1$ a trip per person, no matter how far or short the journey was. You could stay on it all day if you wanted. It sort of did a circuit of main Fort Lauderdale travelling up to the Beach front and back to Broward Centre of performing arts. Basically it stopped when you wanted to get off and most times you could stick your hand up like calling a taxi and it would let you on. The river taxi was another good way to travel and see Fort Lauderdale from another angle. It has 11 stops and a round trip will take about 3 hours. A all day pass cost 12$ per adult. If you like boats and properties then it is just worth taking the taxi for that as they are stunning. Most stops are at a restaurant or shops. They stop near the Gallery shopping centre which was ok, but nothing compared to the previously mention Sawmills.

All in all we had a great time for our week stay in Fort Lauderdale and coming back to the hotel made our stay even more enjoyable. The staff where friendly (even though the conciege did not seem that knowledgable, they did try to help).

If you you just want a beach holiday then you probably would be better to stay on the seafront, as the journey from the Riverhotel is about 10 mins by i trolley. None of the hotels we saw were actually on the beach and you had to cross a busy road to get from the hotels to the beaches.

All in all there is plenty to do in Fort Lauderdale and we even came across a trip to fly you to the Bahamas for the day for $80 per person which if we had time we may of done.

You will not be dissapointed by this hotel.