La Quinta Inn Gainesville, Gainesville

We spent a night in Gainesville at this La Quinta Inn. It is located right off of I-75 and is about 15 minutes west of the University of Florida. According to tax records, it was built in 1989, but appears to have seen a remodeling in the last 5 years. It has exterior hallways and limited suites. This location offered the things you come to expect from La Quinta: Continental breakfast with hot waffles, nice pool to swim in, wireless High Speed Internet, and pets stay for free. The hotel was not very noisy the night we were there even though it was entirely full. Our room was the standard 2 full bed layout La Quinta provides. The beds are too small though. 2 average sized people barely fit on the bed, but the beds were clean and comfortable. The room's phone did not work. It was reported to the front desk at checkout, but thankfully we had cell phones to make our calls with anyways. The free High Speed Internet was awesome, but the Inn still has not said they are wireless. I entered the room looking for an ethernet port but found none. However as soon as I turned on the laptop, it found and logged into the La Quinta WiFi network. Once you open your brower you must register (a daily thing) and off into cyberspace you go! The bathroom was clean and the shower refreshing. The television had less than 20 channels and is part of the dreaded LodgeNet system. You can rent movies, Nintendo 64 video games, or watch other programs on demand...but the TV cannot accept your DVD player or Xbox for example. It is annoying. The 20 channels included the local ABC, CBS, and FOX stations. Gainesville has no NBC station so WNBC from New York was on. They also have CNN, ESPN, ESPN2, Fox News, CNN Headline News, USA, HBO, TBS, and TNT to name a few other channels. All it takes to have the hot waffles is 2 minutes, a La Quinta Waffle Iron, and some of their waffle batter. They have an employee there always to help and clean up the breakfast area in the lobby. It was a good hotel for the price of $69 but the phone and TV need upgrading big time. The wireless internet and free pets was a nice touch as was the hot waffles you make for breakfast.