Last night on Miami Beach I walked into the Indian Creek Hotel - a hotel I had driven past hundreds of times.
The lobby won me over immediately with its Art Deco furniture and two decorative piles of old-fashioned suitcases (some carrying vintage travel labels). Behind the reception desk, dozens of rubber alligator tails stuck out from tiny, numbered cubicles.
"They're our keys," the receptionist explained, showing me one a guest had just dropped off, the key attached to the toy reptile's mouth. "And they're my friends."
Off the small lobby was an even smaller bar, where photographs by Jeremiah Jenner hung on the wall. (None were of synchronized alligator tails.) The bar opened up to a pocket garden, with tables scattered around a lovely fountain. The feeling of tropical seclusion, palm fronds lit by a nearly full moon, was exquisite.
"My friends from Holland stayed here this summer," a Dutch woman told me. "And we ate dinner here every night. The food is excellent."
Indeed, why go anywhere when you have all the beauty of South Beach without the attitude?
