The Inlet Inn

The Inlet Inn is a 1920s house on a quiet street two blocks from the Riverwalk, with a wraparound porch, fourteen rooms across the house and the cottage behind it, and the kind of welcome that remembers how you take your coffee by the second morning. Rooms have high ceilings, ceiling fans, proper beds and small bathrooms; the four in the cottage open onto the garden and are the ones to ask for with a child or a dog.

Breakfast is on the porch from seven: eggs, fruit, bread from the bakery and coffee from Osprey down the street. Bicycles wait by the gate for guests, and the owners, Pell and Ana Ruiz, keep a chalkboard of the day’s tides, the sunset time and whatever is on at the Riverwalk stage. Downtown, the coffee, the galleries and the docks are five minutes on foot, and Stuart Beach is ten by car.

Winter weekends book out weeks ahead; summer is half the price and the porch is still the best seat in town at seven in the morning. Book the cottage for a dog, the house for the quiet.

Good to know

• The cottage rooms are the ones for children and dogs; the house is adults-only after 9 pm.
• Breakfast runs 7 to 10 am on the porch.
• Parking is in the lot behind the house, free.
• Two nights minimum on winter weekends.
• The inn can book guest tee times at Inlet Dunes on weekdays.