Artist House on Fleming

We are here now, and have the Simonton room, first floor. King-size bed, plenty of room for clothing and luggage, nice bathroom. We also have the run of this lovely old guest house - kitchen, dining area, sitting, area, front porch, small pool, back deck. We have a coffee maker, fridge and tabletop ice maker in our room. Full kitchen has microwave, toaster, glassware, mugs, full size fridge. Everything is well kept, very clean, and you have access to a virtual innkeeper by text, and virtual concierge. There are beach towels, bikes, and umbrellas to borrow. Location is fabulous - quiet old section of town, but only a few blocks from the harbor, and only a few blocks from Duval. All are easy walkable. Enjoy your coffee, or a glass of wine out on the porch. Bring back takeout, and dine in the kitchen area. It’s just a beautiful, lid-back vibe, yet just a short walk to bars, bakeries, restaurants and galleries. Enjoy!

I love this place. I think very reasonable price for the quality. I stayed in the Truman room from Sunday to Friday. It is not the typical hotel with a front desk. They communicate through text, and that’s ok because I only needed the key to enter my room. A girl that was here when I arrived gave me the key and explained the lock box. In my bedroom, I had a queen bed and four pillows that were very comfortable, and I have a “sleep number bed” at home. In the bedroom, you will find a small bathroom with a shower which is fine for one person. Nice big nightstand with a charger for all your electronics. One refrigerator, an ice maker which I really found useful to prepare my water to leave in the morning or night drinks. Also, a coffee maker although you have Old Town Bakery with good coffee and pastries 3 minutes walking. You have a nice 6 drawer dresser to empty your suitcase which you can put away in a small closet. The bedroom also has a tv but I didn’t come to Key West to watch tv. I think the Inn is in a great location close enough to everything but far from the night noise and traffic. You have a supermarket, Fausto’s, 9 minutes walking. You can walk to Duval St., to Mallory Square to watch the Sunsets. You can rent a bike or a golf cart to go to the nice beaches and parks. Key West, I learnt today, doesn’t have a Walmart, but it has a CVS so can can get there your snorkeling set or come prepared and bring your own. There are many nice places to eat in walking distance from the Inn. The only things I didn’t like are the smell in the beach which is a natural phenomenon or the smell of marihuana. These doesn’t have anything to do with my stay on the Inn. Otherwise, I liked Key West and I loved the Inn on Fleming. I am definitely coming back.

There appears to have been some recent change in management of this property. It is now managed by Dwell, maybe was previously privately owned? There was no sign of “David” who others have frequently mentioned in reviews. First off, when you check in, there is nobody available to greet you or provide any direction. You are sent a text with instructions on how to find your room and there’s a lock box outside the door to get your keys. Prior reviews have mentioned a free, happy hour and continental breakfast. According to the new management, these are no longer provided. We stayed in the Cornish room, which was on the third floor. The room is cute and well appointed. But the entryway ceiling is extremely low and if you are above about 5‘8“, you were going to hit your head if you’re not careful. There are room air conditioners as opposed to central AC. You have to carry your suitcases up two sets of fairly steep stairs to get to the third floor, this might be an issue for people with mobility problems. The reason that I am giving this property, a poor rating is that we came back from an evening out at about 11:30 PM and went to go to bed and discovered our bed was infested with what appeared to be termite larvae. They were all over the headboard, underneath the sheets in the bed, and all over the curtains. I immediately messaged the property manager and got a prompt response. But was told that these are “swarmers” and are common in the area when it’s warm. I googled a close-up image of the bugs in the bed, and discovered they are a form of termite. See my photos. The only resolution we were offered was to have the maid come in the morning and clean the room. Fortunately, there is a small second bedroom in this suite so we were able to attempt to sleep in there as opposed to finding a new hotel at midnight. However, it only has a full-size bed and two full-size adults have quite a hard time fitting in that bed. The ceilings in that room are also slanted and quite low, so the person sleeping on the left side of the bed has to be very careful to not hit their head when getting into the bed. The inn was full, so there was no other room for us to be moved to. We slept about 1.5 hours and left as soon as we could find another hotel in the morning. On our way out, we met our next-door neighbors in the Geiger room. They also had the same experience with the same bugs in their bed and room. There seems to be a significant issue with these bugs on this property. I am not sure how you could have this bad of an infestation of termites and not be aware of it. Seems to me they are spraying and hoping the bugs don’t come out while people are there. This place needs termite treatment. Our negative experience at this property caused us to miss half a day of our vacation as we had to change properties and try to catch up on sleep after being up most of the night. It is unfortunate because the property is cute and the location is convenient.