My wife and I stayed at the Inn at Perry Cabin over the 2008 Memorial Day holiday. We had a two room suite with a partial water view.

This is a lovely and very comfortable hotel. The staff is very nice and friendly and efficient. Our room was terrific. The décor was very comfortable and looked like one of those great rooms in a Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn catalogs. White bead board wainscoting, sailing and nautical prints, deep leather chairs and a comfortable couch. A nice table a chair set on our private porch. We particularly liked the bed and found it to be one of the more comfortable hotel beds we’ve used. We also very much liked the leather chest at the foot of the bed that contained a TV that rose to viewing level at the touch of a bedside button.

The bathroom was bigger than most of the rooms in our house. Great, large tub, separate shower. Very nice bath and shower products. Nice robes. Our suite also had a powder room off the living room.

We also very much liked the Pub bar. The food was very nice and the bar tenders very good.

We both enjoyed excellent care at the spa and thought that the exercise room was well equipped, clean and well maintained. The hotel has a very nice pool with a bar area poolside. There are also sailing, horseback riding and other activities. Also, the very cute town of St. Michaels is within walking distance and there are some nice restaurants and lovely shops in town.

What was very nice is that we were told that the hotel was full that weekend but we hardly saw or noticed anyone else. It was very quiet and all very discrete.

If I have one criticism it was the room service – the food itself not the waitstaff. We ordered dinner from the room service menu and found it dull for the high prices. On the other hand, we would have loved to have ordered food off the bar menu for room service, but they don’t let you. Room service breakfast was good but also very expensive.

The Inn is a lovely hotel. It was a big splurge for us, but we will go back. All things considered, while costly it was good value for the money.

The hotel grounds was impressive and exciting from the moment I pulled onto the red-cobble-stone driveway. It felt like a mini resort with lots of grass surrounding the area. The whole town is a flat and quiet place right next to the bay. It is walking distance from all the local stores.

Checking in was no hassle, and they send a porter to help you carry your luggage to your room. I stayed in the Studio Room, but was a but disappointed by the size compared to the website photo. Darn camera tricks!

Everything looked clean and neat though. The bathroom with it's clawed tub was great. The TV actually comes out from the treasure cabinet! Unfortunately the backyard porch is not private, though some rooms are. It's a trade-off between having the water view or having privacy.

The majority of the guests are well over 40-50, I must have been the only one in my 20's.

We stayed two nights in a master suite with water view although some rooms have more of a water view than the one we had and unless you need the living room and an extra large bathroom the master suite may not be necessary. Food was excellent at dinner both in the pub and in the main restaurant; desserts were also excellent -- we tried every one of them. Property is very well maintained and pretty to view with lovely landscaping and gardens. The setting is peaceful and a perfect place for couples to relax without their children although I saw families with little ones. The spa on the property is decent with good treatments at reasonable value. St Michaels is good for a few hours of walking around but not much else. The hotel offers a boat with captain to tour the bay and the sunset cruise was a great activity at a fair price. Our main beefs are: 1. Breakfast menu was plain vanilla items presented very plainly -- aside from the excellent pastry basket, pretty blah considering the level of hotel and price we are talking about. For $15 you expect a piece of fruit or some kind of garnish on the plate with your omelet. 2. Average guest drives at least 3-4 hours to get there; on arrival they don't give you anything to eat or drink and I could really have used something having driven 5 hours. A fruit bowl did arrive in my room an hour later and maybe that was what I supposed to get on arrival. At night, they put two fairly average cookies in your room wrapped in saran-wrap instead of doing something interesting plus it was the same type cookies both nights. Again, little touches like these could make the place exceptional but they don't go that extra mile to make that impression which is surprising since Orient Express has very few properties in the USA and tries to present itself as something exceptional. While in town we came across the Old Brick Inn which had a fantastic looking innovative breakfast menu and a plate of fresh gourmet brownies and cookies around for people to munch on all day long. It just doesn't take that much extra expense for a top notch hotel to make its guests feel truly welcome, especially if they are paying that premium price, and I don't understand why it seems these days that the more you pay the less hospitality you get. I wouldn't stay here more than 2 nights and think that it would be best to visit this place during spring or fall but not summer or winter when you have either lots of mosquitoes and heat or frigid weather and don't want to be outside walking or enjoying the setting.

We had a nice enough stay (celebrating a special occasion), but as my husband put it, "It's one of the nicest places we have stayed that I would never return to." It is a lovely property, no doubt about it, but it was not worth the money we spent.

Also (and this is what really bothers me), we did not get the type of room we reserved. We had booked a "State" room (one step up from the less expensive "Signature" rooms). Upon arrival we were shown to a small room on an upper floor. Never having been guests there before we weren't really sure what to expect, but the room didn't match their description of a "State" room. We questioned it immediately, but we were assured that we were given the type of accommodation we had requested. We didn't press the issue, but when I got to thinking about it several weeks later, I went back to their website and I saw that the room they have pictured as a "Signature" room is the very room we stayed in. It would have been one thing if they had admitted the room change and adjusted the price accordingly, but that was not the case. I feel like our patronage was not important to them, perhaps because we were not repeat guests (we certainly won't be now!). Everything else was fine, but the room switch left a sour taste in my mouth. We will find other accommodations the next time we visit St. Michaels.