My wife and I have been staying at the Hermosa Hotel and Cottage nearly every summer for a decade now and love the place. We're well-traveled, spoiled are lucky enough to have lived abroad or vacationed in some of the world's great places--Bali, Tuscany and Liguria and Umbria, Mexico, Virgin Islands--and we wouldn't stay anywhere else on Catalina (which is, by the way, the cheapest trip to the Mediterranean any West Coaster can take). Do we stay there just because it's cheap? Sure, but that's not the main reason: It's ""period"" Catalina, its funkiness is history, and the point of going to Catalina, for us anyway, is to get away from the fast-food-contemporary/franchise-hotel lifestyle of the mainland. Besides, it's central located in Avalon--everything within an easy walk--and the staff is as friendly and efficient as the staff at Johnny Rocket's on Melrose.
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