Airlines

Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside resort evaluate

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When it initially opened in September 1926, the Breakers loomed massive on the Lengthy Seaside, California, skyline … at a hovering (for the time) 14 tales.

After it was reflagged because the world’s eighth Hilton within the Nineteen Thirties, it turned referred to as probably the greatest inns on the West Coast, attracting Hollywood golden age glitterati like Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant. Since then, it has modified fingers a number of instances and was most just lately a retirement residence.

Associated: TPG’s 16 favourite inns in California for each kind of traveler

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Lately, the resort — which reopened as a Fairmont in November 2024 after a multiyear, $150 million renovation — is likely to be dwarfed by the encompassing edifices. Nevertheless it retains a regal air due to its inimitable Spanish Revival fashion and imposing silhouette.

The interiors, in the meantime, have been gorgeously redone with an eye fixed towards artwork deco aptitude (assume: rounded velvet furnishings and polished brass lighting fixtures) whereas retaining authentic parts like ornate crown molding and old style mail chutes nonetheless intact.

We obtained a primary take a look at the resort days after its opening. This is what the expertise was like.

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Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside location

The Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside sits smack dab in the midst of downtown Lengthy Seaside, proper alongside Ocean Boulevard. The resort is just below 7 miles away from Lengthy Seaside Airport (LGB), which takes round 20 to half-hour by automotive to achieve. Relying on visitors, you’ll be able to count on to pay round $40 to get to and from the airport through a ride-hailing service.

The property can also be 25 miles south of Los Angeles Worldwide Airport (LAX), and a journey from there can take anyplace from 40 to 75 minutes and price upward of $80 if you’re utilizing a ride-hailing service. Another choice is John Wayne Airport (SNA), which is 25 miles southeast of the resort in Santa Ana, California. The drive from there can take round 40 to 60 minutes and price roughly $70 when utilizing a service like Uber or Lyft.

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Should you’re already visiting Los Angeles, it is easy to achieve the resort through major thoroughfares. It sits only a brief distance off Interstate 710 (also referred to as the Lengthy Seaside Freeway).

Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside reserving particulars

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The Fairmont model is a part of Accor and participates within the Accor Dwell Limitless loyalty program. Members can earn factors on stays when reserving instantly by means of Accor at a fee of 25 factors per 10 euros ($11) spent and redeem them in increments of two,000 factors to avoid wasting 40 euros ($44) on resort payments. Reserving as a member by means of Accor additionally opens up preferential charges that may embody reductions and add-ons equivalent to free breakfast or on-property credit.

Charges on the Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside begin at $349 per evening.

Standout options

  • You may wish to take a look at the resort’s a number of swanky watering holes, together with the rooftop Halo venue and the foyer jazz lounge Alter Ego.
  • The constructing has beautiful historic options, in addition to fantastically redone rooms and public areas.
  • Friends can anticipate reasonably priced room charges with on-property advantages when reserving instantly by means of Accor.
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Drawbacks

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The vibe at Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside

“That is the mayor of Lengthy Seaside,” our server at Nettuno stated as she set down a plate of Caledonian prawns with Calabrian chili butter, indicating a person entertaining a big feast at a close-by desk.

He was simply certainly one of many locals we discovered trying out the newly opened resort in November. The spa was principally booked throughout our two-night keep, and each the glamorous eating room at Sky Room and the gardenlike lounge at Halo on the higher flooring had been filled with curious Lengthy Beachers desperate to strive the meals and drinks on the metropolis’s hottest new resort.

Little question the fanfare will relax over time and the group combine will veer extra towards out-of-town enterprise vacationers and households trying out Lengthy Seaside’s longstanding sights. However for now, it was good to see a mixture of guests and locals alike.

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Rooms at Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside

Though it had 330 lodging again in its authentic heyday, after the current renovation, the Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside now homes simply 185 rooms and suites. These begin with 279-square-foot Fairmont King rooms and vary as much as the Breakers Two Bed room Suite on the twelfth flooring.

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I stayed in a Fairmont Bay View King, which is just a few classes greater, about 20 sq. toes bigger and round $50 per evening dearer than an ordinary room. It was on the finish of the hallway on the resort’s ninth flooring and supplied views of the Port of Lengthy Seaside and San Pedro Bay by means of massive home windows that allow in loads of pure gentle.

The room had a brief entry hallway and a small closet that had been in all probability vestiges of the historic room footprint.

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The room’s shade palette was impressed by the port, with tones of business grays, cloudlike whites and swirls of blue and gold on the rugs, plus some framed seashells above the king-size mattress. The spotless white linens, woven straw wall accents and bleached picket flooring gave the room a clear, up to date look.

Hooked up to the wall in a single nook was a big flat-screen TV. To the opposite facet of the mattress, there was a small type of multipurpose space that includes a spherical, marble-topped desk that doubled as a spot to eat and work. It had one heavy armchair with a ropelike body (one other nod to the close by port’s industries) subsequent to it. There have been additionally a Nespresso machine and complimentary bottles of water.

Probably the most spectacular characteristic was the lavatory, which was surprisingly massive for an previous resort constructing. The area included an extended marble countertop with two sinks and mirrors, a separate water closet with a frosted-glass door and a marble spa-style moist space that contained each the bath and the bathe.

There was a wall-mounted, hand-held showerhead and one other overhead one with a number of stream capabilities, together with a mister. Each the self-importance and the bathe space had been stocked with Le Labo Rose 31 merchandise.

Although on the small facet, the room’s contemporary look and spacious rest room created an opulent atmosphere equally suited to each leisure and work journeys.

Food and drinks at Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside

There are 5 bars and eating places on the Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside, and even a brief keep is sufficient to expertise most, if not all, of them.

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Nettuno

Nettuno is the resort’s major restaurant and sits subsequent to the reception space within the foyer. Its eating room has hovering double-height ceilings anchored by squared-off columns with antiqued-mirrored surfaces and Corinthian capitals which might be lovely contrasts to the up to date artwork on the partitions and the chainlike chandeliers strung throughout the ceiling.

The breakfast menu presents requirements like avocado toast with child kale, cherry tomatoes and stracciatella on seedy entire wheat ($18) and an egg white omelet with seasonal herbs, mushrooms and goat cheese ($20), plus pastries like a fluffy blueberry-olive oil muffin ($6) and quite a lot of coffees, teas, juices and smoothies ($6 to $16).

The lunch and dinner menus characteristic principally coastal Italian fare like zucchini blossoms crammed with lemon-herb ricotta ($24), artichoke tortelli with brown butter and sage ($28) and tiramisu ($10).

Sky Room

Sky Room, which takes up many of the resort’s thirteenth flooring, dates to 1938, when Conrad Hilton took over the property and turned a penthouse suite into one of many West Coast’s toniest eating places.

It’s wanting as splendorous as ever once more thanks to an entire restoration. It is easy to image your self right here throughout its prewar pinnacle as you cozy up in one of many huge round velvet cubicles or on the intimate two-tops by the home windows, all illuminated by a blinding fluted gentle fixture that seems to ripple because it runs almost the size of the eating room.

Open just for dinner Tuesday by means of Saturday, Sky Room looks like a throwback to the supper golf equipment of yore due to the bustling, neatly uniformed employees, a cocktail record of previous favorites and a roster of continental classics you may need discovered on a number of the authentic menus — oysters Rockefeller and clams on line casino, anybody? You may truly spot a number of the Nineteen Thirties menus adorning the partitions close to the doorway.

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Begin with piping-hot parkerhouse rolls with whipped cultured butter ($8), then tuck into specialties like luscious Dungeness crabcakes with smoked trout roe and caviar butter ($28) — there’s even an entire caviar menu, if that is your factor.

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Convey just a few associates to indulge within the California wagyu beef Wellington with mushroom duxelle, bordelaise sauce and prosciutto encased in a flaky pastry crust ($165), or go lighter with the juicy entire John Dory (fileted tableside, after all) with yuzu-kosho beurre blanc and herb salad (market value based mostly on weight). The wine record options bottles from all over the world, together with the likes of chardonnay from Western Australia’s vaunted Vasse Felix vineyard ($105 per bottle).

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Order the bananas Foster ($22) to finish your meal with a bang … or slightly a flambe because the employees units the dish alight proper at your desk.

Halo

Halo looks like a bit secret tucked away on the resort’s high flooring. Inside, glazed inexperienced tiling, pink wallpaper with unique leaf motifs and a fantastically lit, deep-veined alabaster bar all create the sensation of a Caribbean backyard occasion.

That is solely heightened by the tropical cocktails, just like the startlingly blue Clarified High Ground Mai Tai ($19) with Bacardi Ocho rum, Plantation Stiggins pineapple rum, Wray & Nephew overproof rum, Grand Marnier, lime, mango and pineapple.

Come the hotter months, the outside terrace needs to be the very best place on the town to catch the sundown and views of Catalina Island throughout the channel.

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An added historic oddity? Should you search for on the resort’s belvedere, you’ll be able to nonetheless spot a World Warfare II pillbox gun turret from when the constructing shaped a part of the nation’s coastal protection.

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La Sala

On the road facet of the foyer, La Sala is designed to really feel like a comfortable solarium with jade-green chinoiserie wallpaper adorned with blossoming bushes and a palm-shaped brass and crystal chandelier overhead. Friends and guests can cease in for barista-made espresso and tea drinks, cocktails and light-weight bites all through the day and night.

Alter Ego

Moodily lit and embellished with emerald velvet chairs and Henri Rousseau-like floral prints on the partitions, Alter Ego is positioned simply off the foyer. There shall be reside jazz most nights to accompany inventive twists on traditional cocktails, together with updates on the daiquiri and the soiled martini.

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The drinks to order, although, are the specialty Previous-Fashioneds, together with one impressed by California’s redwoods with Previous Forester bourbon, varied house-made botanical tinctures, “campfire” bitters, a smoky mist and even an edible pine cone ($23).

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Facilities and repair at Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside

On the japanese finish of the bottom flooring, the Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside has a small health heart and a bi-level spa.

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The health heart has a plethora of window-facing Technogym cardio machines, together with treadmills and stationary bikes, plus racks of weights, resistance bands, kettlebells and steadiness balls, amongst different tools. There’s additionally a water dispenser so you’ll be able to refill your individual bottle.

Subsequent door, the Fairmont Spa has an ethereal reception space replete with cream-colored marble and up to date brushed brass lighting fixtures, plus loads of counter area to show the merchandise included into the therapies, together with objects from Biologique Recherche, Venn and Lola’s Apothecary.

There are separate males’s and ladies’s locker rooms with steam rooms and bathe amenities, in addition to a pre- or post-treatment lounge space with blond timber partitions and chaise-style seats separated by diaphanous curtains.

The therapy menu contains intriguing choices like a Venn supercharged facial (60 minutes for $260) and the signature Breakers therapeutic massage that you may tailor to your preferences (60 minutes for $220).

Up on the third flooring, the resort now contains a small outside pool and deck with loads of lounge chairs, some seating vignettes and a pool bar (although it was not open throughout our keep).

Service on the resort couldn’t have been hotter or extra enthusiastic. There have been just a few opening-week hiccups, equivalent to a server bringing the fallacious dish or a sure glass of wine on the menu not being accessible, however these have probably been ironed out by now.

Out and about

For these not accustomed to the realm, there may be a lot to see and do in Lengthy Seaside.

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Households would possibly wish to stroll to the Aquarium of the Pacific and the waterfront the place harbor cruises and ferries to Catalina depart. The close by Terrace Theater hosts performances all year long, and varied seashores in addition to the Lengthy Seaside Museum of Artwork are fast drives away. There may be additionally outlet procuring, plus the unbiased boutiques of Retro Row, close by. As for enterprise vacationers on the town for conferences or conferences, the Lengthy Seaside Conference & Leisure Middle is conveniently located subsequent door.

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Accessibility at Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside

Previous inns, particularly these with landmark standing that prohibits drastic modifications to their infrastructure, can generally be hit and miss in relation to accessibility, however the Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside has included loads of accessible options into its renovation.

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The resort’s major entrance and floor flooring are step-free, so these in wheelchairs can entry all of the areas. There are additionally elevators to each flooring, together with a small wheelchair elevate as much as the pool deck from the third flooring. Talking of the pool, it has a chairlift at one finish to help people with restricted mobility into the water. The spa additionally has wheelchair-accessible showers in its locker rooms.

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The resort’s hallways are all extensive sufficient to accommodate wheelchairs, and there are seven room and suite classes with mobility- and hearing-accessible amenities. They embody rest room and bathe seize bars, and closet rods, towel racks and viewports lower than 48 inches excessive. These designed for hearing-impaired visitors embody visible alarms and doorbells.

Testing

Not like lots of the different entries on our record of the finest inns that opened in 2024, the Fairmont Breakers Lengthy Seaside shouldn’t be a brand new resort. Reasonably, it’s a landmark reborn, one with a storied legacy courting again almost a century that also manages to really feel fully contemporary due to its new lease on life. Having already garnered the curiosity of locals, who come to hang around in its grand public areas, it is solely a matter of time till phrase will get out and vacationers from farther afield begin realizing what a particular keep awaits them.

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