You will certainly feel at home in this restored Spanish villa dating from the 1920s, which gets its name from a terrace covered in wind chimes. The white-washed walls that surround the main building keep out the noise of the street and add a sense of security at night. The beach is just one block away, but people still sunbathed on the sun deck and swam in the pool. Frankly, I preferred the beach.
Unlike the deck or the pool, the in-house Tiki Boat Bar was sadly empty most of the time, except for newly arrived guests who were too tired to brave the streets to look for food. The inn also hid all kinds of little reading nooks with bookcases of trashy novels and out-of-date tour books left by previous guests, which further contributed to the quirky charm of the inn.
The rooms themselves are small and simple, but they hold the necessities: bed, bathroom, closet, TV, and my favorite-–the air-conditioner! You can tell that someone put effort into making the rooms cozy with sunflower bedspreads and native artwork on the walls. The inn caters mostly to older guests, but even as a college student, I found it to be the perfect combination of central location with a quiet, clean place to sleep. This is definitely a great choice for the traveler who wants to avoid the larger touristy hotels.
If you walk a block down Calle Taft toward the ocean, you arrive at Playa Condado (Condado Beach). This stretch of beach is somewhat more eroded than others, but you avoid the throngs of tourists that flock to surrounding hotels. Playa Condado is where families come for the afternoon, where teenagers get busted for smoking under the palm trees, and where kids play rowdy tournaments of beach volleyball. We even met a member of the Bacardi family who walked his dog every night on the beach!
A word of advice: try not to book your flight so that you arrive at the inn before the 2:00pm check-in or leave the inn much after the 12:00pm check-out. Wind Chimes does not have a locked room where they can hold your bags for you while you wait for your room or your flight. Instead, they stow them under the stairs in full view of anyone who walks by. And while I wouldn’t be too worried since no one can get into the inn unless they’re a guest or an employee, you can’t be too careful.
Also, if you need to do laundry during your stay, At Wind Chimes will offer to do it for you at a charge of $10 per load for wash and dry. But if you’re on a tighter budget, there’s a laundromat about a quarter of a mile west of the inn along McLeary where you can do three loads for under $15.