The Azura Hotel in Santa Rosa

During our recent overnighter in Santa Rosa, we stayed at The Azura Hotel, located on Healdsburg Avenue near downtown Santa Rosa.

The Azura refers to itself as a "boutique hotel." Actually, it's more like a really nice motel with nice appointments and amenities. But believe me, it's not bad ... not bad at all.

First of all, it has a neat room card. You don't have to insert it in the door handle. Instead, you just turn the little design on the card toward the matching design on the door handle, and the door unlocks. This is the first of this kind that I've ever seen.

The bed is top drawer. It's thick and tall like the one I had recently at the Luxor in Las Vegas.

It's very, very comfortable and it delivers one helluva good night's sleep. And isn't that what hotel beds are for anyway?

Only one problem – it's hard to climb into or onto because it's so high. I almost had to do a running start. Once I got on, I didn't want to get off because of the effort required.

They have Illy espresso coffee and custom coffee brewer all filled with water waiting for you when you arrive, and a large bottle of Pellegrino sparkling water as well.

It's the first time I've been given a complimentary bottle of sparkling water.

The shower is weird. How so, you may ask? Well, for one thing, there's no shower door to close. A large glass pane fronts the shower, but only halfway. Why? Because the shower head is mounted ... well, not on the wall, but on the ceiling. It's large, and round, and the water falls on you like an overhead rain shower. The bathroom floor got slightly wet during my shower.

Hand wash, body lotion, shampoo/conditioner and shower gel are all in refillable pump bottles of the non-removable persuasion. They all have a delightfully refreshing aroma.

Nice room, huh?

Oh, and when I checked out, I wanted to pay in cash, but they don't accept cash. What? They don't accept cash? You heard that right. The office girl said they had an "incident" a while back so the owner instituted a credit card-only policy. She never explained "incident."