Review - Sylvia Beach Hotel

Sylvia Beach Hotel - A Place for Writers

Okay, so one of my first reviews will be a hotel and not a book. So, sue me. I became aware of the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, Oregon through the Willamette Writers' newsletter. It sounded cool. I'm close to Newport (an hour or so from Eugene), so I went to the website and started salivating.

From the Sylvia Hotel website:

This is truly a hotel for book lovers. There are no t.v.'s, no radios, no phones (although 2 public phones are available.) It is a quiet place on most days. Except for the glorious storms. Then the wind howls, the building shakes, and the rain pounds down. Some days it's warm and sunny and the sky is bright blue. Some days there's morning fog. Some days the wind makes you stay inside and read! Some days are rainbow days, the weather just can't decide. The ocean is always present. (The hotel is on a 45 foot bluff right above the surf.) You move into the rhythm of the sea. Perhaps that's why time seems to slow way down, almost to a standstill.

Paradise.

The rooms go by the names of various novelists and poets. Ooo! The Mark Twain Room. My favorite writer. Want to stay in Edgar Allan Poe, complete with pendulum swinging over the bed? Like Agatha Christie, Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Melville? There's a room for you here.

Breakfast is included in the room price and dinner is family style, where the owner might be en table and challenge everyone to a game of Two Truths, One Lie.

You'll like the website, too. No funky photos making the rooms look twice their size. Every room is illustrated with tasteful line drawings.

Forget I said this. This isn't anyplace you'd want to go. Of course, I say that because I'd like to save it for myself. Don't live in Oregon? Eat your heart out.