Motel 6, Tallahassee

Many reading will say how can a Motel 6 in a hick town like Tallahassee, Florida garner such a high rating from any reviewer? The answer is easy: price, people, cleanliness, and location. The Motel 6 Downtown Tallahassee is several blocks down Apalachee Parkway from the Capitol (1 mile away). This location makes it easy to reach any part of the Capitol Circle area within minutes. You can be in Crawfordville or on I-10 in about 10 minutes. Very impressive considering the hotel is near Downtown. FSU (2 mi.), FAMU (1.8 mi.), and Tallahassee Community College are all within 5 minutes or so. Parking is easy, plentiful and the hotel is bounded in front by the Appalachee Pkwy. Frontage Road and in the rear by Lafayette St. Tallahassee Regional Airport is 6.3 miles away according to the Motel 6 site. Our stay was for 2 nights and each night was booked online via Motel6.com and we were able to get the Click6 deal which gave us a total of $39.59 per night + tax. That was a total of $79.18 for 2 nights, that is about the same price for one night at less worthy accomodations in Tallahassee. This Motel 6 was built in 1969 according to tax records. However it has been renovated several times I am sure and the last job has held up reasonably well. The room was the typical Motel 6 layout. This room featured 2 Queen beds which provided two good nights of sleep. The room's air conditioning worked well as did all the lights and the telephone. The room was clean, smelled fresh, looked fresh, but we only had 1 bar of soap and no towels. A quick trip to the front desk solved that. They gave us 4 bars of soap, 4 sets of towels complete with washcloths and floor towel, 2 additional pillows, and an apology. We happily thanked them and went about our day in Tallahassee. The Front Desk staff is mainly local college students and we saw the same two on different shifts during our 2 night stay. On the morning of our checkout, the Manager worked the Front Desk. The Manager lives on property and the lobby has coffee from 7-10 AM. The television was the basic Motel 6 Philips 19" Color TV with HBO, ESPN, CBS, FOX, NBC, ABC, ESPN2, The Weather Channel, TNT, TBS, USA, and CNN Headline News to name a few channels. The room features no alarm clock/radio, but the extra channels on the TV were welcomed compared to La Quinta and other chains. (No LodgeNet!) This Motel 6 appeared to use Dish Network. The TV had no AV inputs, but the Coax Cable port was available if you unplugged the TV from the cable outlet. The data port is really a normal phone outlet above the desk area, but it did not work. We instead used the phone's cord (they provide a cord long enough to cross the room) and we dialed up to Earthlink. You must dial 9 and then the area code (850) before being able to make the call. I like the Motel 6 philosophy on phone calls....all local, 1-800, and calling card-long distance calls are free. You can buy a phone card at the front desk if you need to make a long-distance call. The Motel cannot charge the call to your room! We asked for a non-smoking room and got a non-smoking room. They even asked us which floor we wished for. My advice is to arrive early, we got in around 6PM and the place filled up around 9-10 PM. The hotel has truck parking, welcomes pets (and cleans up in the room, but the evidence is left in the mulch and bushes in front of your door), and has a very nice and clean pool. I was really impressed with this Motel 6 and it has become the default place to stay for us in Tallahassee. Compared to the La Quinta Inn South Tallahassee (a bad apple in the very good La Quinta barrel), this hotel was a great experience. I recommend it to any traveler and I would likely look into staying at other Motel 6 locations because of this location.