Here to encourage you on your own bold pursuit of intentional living as I live out my own. I’m passionate about running, spending time doing what I love and cheering others on to approach running with joy.
Dom and I went to Laguna Beach for five days for our honeymoon directly after our wedding in May and stayed at Hotel Joaquin. We still talk about this hotel all the time haha! We knew we wanted to go to the beach for our honeymoon and both love visiting California, so we started to look into different areas and hotels, and ultimately, we found Hotel Joaquin through a few of my favorite influencers! I’d seen a couple people go there throughout the past year and had bookmarked it several times. We chose it for several reasons:
Spoiler: we are SO glad we chose Hotel Joaquin. Everything about this hotel, which is one of five resorts by Auric Road, felt so right for our honeymoon. Here are a few things in particular we especially loved!!
Let’s start with the design and interior. Oh my GOSH. I was taking notes for our home one day haha everything was so beautifully designed and carefully crafted! Something we really loved was how each room has its own record player and you can go to the lobby to switch out the records. We had such a blast playing different records each morning and night that it inspired us to get our own record player for our apartment! I also can’t fail to mention that the bed was beyond comfortable, the bathrooms were beautiful and the lobby/bar felt so inviting. We loved every single inch of the space lol.
The pool felt so special, it was very tranquil and we felt so peaceful every time we hung out there, which was almost every afternoon! Since the hotel is so small, it’s not like you have to worry about it being flooded with guests and it’s easy to run up to the bar to grab drinks or a charcuterie board or even some of their board games if you want to play games by the pool.
The service is amazing. They have a text service where you can communicate with the staff and it made things so easy. They’d text to see if we wanted coffee in the morning, to see if we needed anything after checking in, the complimentary breakfast was outstanding, we texted one night when I felt sick and needed medicine, etc. etc. Everything felt like it all ran so smoothly and efficiently, we had zero complaints at all!
One of our favorite parts was that we’d wake up and see the same staff every day. Dom really developed a relationship with a few of them (always the chatty one haha) and we’d never stayed anywhere where we’d see the same person on staff every night. We LOVED that element!
Another reason we picked Hotel Joaquin is because of all the little extras they have: bikes, gear for snorkeling, all the board games, paddleboards, etc. Unfortunately a lot of this stuff wasn’t available bc of covid, but most of the time, we didn’t want to do anything because we were so content simply relaxing by the pool!
It sounds silly to pick a destination based on a hotel, but if you’re looking for a recommendation, I can very confidently recommend Hotel Joaquin and suggest you look into the other Auric Road properties! Especially if you're wanting a trip where you can relax, but there's also still things to do...look into them!! We LOVED it!!! Dom and I are already looking into the others for our one year anniversary and hope to make a reservation at one!!