Inn at the Pier

A trip built around not driving

At 14 months old, the twins were at an age where the difference between an easy trip and an exhausting one could come down to something as simple as how many times we had to get them back into the car.

So when we planned two nights in Pismo Beach, we weren’t looking for an itinerary-heavy Central Coast trip. This was one of our first real drive getaways with the kids, and the goal was almost the opposite: get there, park the car, and make life as easy as possible for a couple of days.

That is largely why we chose Inn at the Pier.

The hotel sits right at the Pismo Beach Pier, close enough that from our balcony we could look out over the Pismo Beach sign, the pier, the surfers and the ocean. Once we arrived, most of what we wanted from this particular trip was outside the front door.

With two 14-month-olds, that mattered more to us than having a long list of things to do. And, honestly, the hotel ended up being one of the best room setups we had experienced with the twins up to that point.

Arriving with two 14-month-olds

One vacation expense we have become increasingly unwilling to cheap out on with little kids: valet.

Valet is life.

When your car contains two children plus luggage plus whatever assortment of toddler equipment apparently became necessary between leaving your house and arriving at a hotel, handing someone the keys and having help unloading everything is money well spent.

We pulled up, gave the valet our keys, unloaded and walked straight into the hotel. There were no stairs to navigate, no steep driveway and no complicated arrival. The property felt very easy to enter with the kids and all of our stuff, which sounds like a tiny thing until you’re doing it with twins.

The lobby helped too. It is bright, coastal and genuinely cute, but what we cared about in that moment was that it was functional. There were couches, chairs and enough open space for the twins to move around while we handled check-in. They immediately climbed onto the furniture, investigated the swivel chairs and generally burned off some of the energy they had accumulated during the drive.

Our room wasn’t ready when we arrived. We had tried for an early check-in but hadn’t called ahead to arrange one. The hotel couldn’t immediately give us a room, but they did start cleaning ours early and had it ready surprisingly quickly. We probably waited around 30 minutes.

Normally, 30 minutes in a hotel lobby with two 14-month-olds can feel considerably longer than 30 minutes. Here, it didn’t. The kids had space to move, there was a small area where we could grab a snack if necessary, and when we wanted to get out, we could leave our things and walk straight down toward the pier.

That was our first indication that the location was going to do a lot of the work for us on this trip.

The room

Our room was not a suite, but it was one of the better standard hotel rooms we had found for traveling with the twins. There was simply space.

We had enough room between the bed, dresser and sitting area to move around without constantly stepping over luggage or each other. There was also a couch that could convert into another bed. At 14 months, though, we weren’t ready to put the twins on a pullout couch and hope nobody rolled off in the middle of the night.

So out came our trusty floor bed.

We pushed it against the couch and a wall and used some of the couch cushions to create additional padding around the setup. The remaining open sides were already so close to the floor that we weren’t particularly worried about a roll turning into anything dramatic.

It worked extremely well. It also created an unintended recreational facility.

The twins had recently discovered the joy of jumping off things, so before bedtime the couch became a launchpad onto the floor bed. They would climb up, jump down, repeat, and somehow still have enough energy to do it again. At that age, this counted as evening entertainment.

We had also brought a few familiar toys for each child — nothing elaborate, maybe a couple of blocks, a book, a stacking toy. The floor bed doubled as a little play area when we needed some downtime, which meant they could play with something familiar while we got a rare minute to sit down ourselves.

That combination — enough floor space, the couch, the floor-bed setup and room for the kids to play — is a big reason this room worked so well for us. The bathroom was also generously sized, which made another part of traveling with two very small children easier rather than harder.

The balcony was part of the room

The room itself worked. The balcony is what made us love it.

We had booked an ocean-view room, and from the balcony we were looking almost directly over the Pismo Beach sign toward the pier and the water. We could watch surfers. We could watch people moving around the pier. We could stand outside for sunset after the twins’ early bedtime routine had effectively ended our evening.

And the railing had one unexpectedly useful feature.

It wasn’t glass, but the wooden design had openings large enough that the kids could stand safely behind it and still see what we were seeing. That meant we didn’t have to spend every minute holding two toddlers up so they could see the ocean.

Parents of twins will understand why this qualifies as an amenity.

We spent both evenings out there as a family, watching the light change over the water. In the mornings, when everyone was awake much earlier than most vacationers would voluntarily choose, the view was still there.

For this particular trip, the balcony made the room feel like somewhere we could actually spend time rather than somewhere we were waiting to leave.

The rooftop pool

The rooftop pool was small. Very small.

It may have been one of the smallest rooftop hotel pools we had seen, but with 14-month-old twins, that wasn’t necessarily a negative. We could comfortably stand with them, let them splash and play, and keep the entire experience pretty contained. There weren’t crowds of people trying to turn the pool into something it wasn’t. During our time there, it was mostly us with a few other younger kids around.

For our stage of life, it worked.

The rooftop also had food and drinks available nearby, so pool time didn’t require a separate plan. We could get something to drink, order a snack if we needed one and use the towels provided there rather than hauling towels up from the room.

It was another example of what worked about this trip: very little required much production.

Eating at the hotel

One of our meals was at Cypress Beach House, on the hotel rooftop. We sat near the edge overlooking the ocean and pier, which gave the twins approximately a thousand things to look at while we ate.

This is an underrated feature of restaurants with little kids. They weren’t just sitting in high chairs staring at us. They could watch people on the boardwalk, look toward the water and follow everything happening below.

There were plenty of high chairs available, and the staff was gracious about the reality of eating with two very young children. We never felt as though the expectation was that the twins needed to sit perfectly still for the duration of the meal.

And the food was legitimately good. Linda had an ahi poke dish that was much better than she expected from what could easily have been a restaurant relying almost entirely on its location. Armon had a burger, which inevitably became partly the twins’ burger, along with a few other things we ordered for them.

The ocean view may get you to the table. The fact that the meal was actually good made us want to stay there.

Why the location worked so well

For this trip, Inn at the Pier’s location was probably its biggest advantage. We could walk out of the hotel and be at the pier almost immediately.

At 14 months, the twins had only been walking for a couple of months, so the wooden pier itself required a little more attention than a normal sidewalk. The boards were uneven in places and there were areas where hardware in the decking made us watch their feet more carefully.

They still loved it.

There were surfers to watch, people fishing, the ocean on both sides and enough activity that walking down the pier felt like an outing without requiring us to manufacture one.

Near the pier there was also a small play area that worked well for kids around their age, plus the giant Pismo Beach sign, which apparently doubles quite effectively as a place for toddlers to run around and play hide-and-seek. The boardwalk continued along the beach, and restaurants, coffee and shops were all close enough to reach with the stroller.

That was exactly what we had wanted. We weren’t trying to see how much of the Central Coast we could fit into 48 hours. We were trying to see how little logistical effort we could expend while still feeling like we had gone somewhere.

Pismo delivered.

What we did beyond the hotel

The next morning we walked roughly ten minutes with the stroller to Honeymoon Cafe. The walk itself was part of the appeal because it let us see more of Pismo without getting everyone into the car.

Honeymoon Cafe had outdoor seating and a menu that worked well for us: breakfast food, coffee, tea, matcha and plenty of options. The twins shared a breakfast burrito that was considerably larger than two 14-month-olds needed, so naturally it became everybody’s breakfast burrito.

On the walk we discovered Old West Cinnamon Rolls.

This matters because one thing readers should eventually learn about Armon is that cinnamon sugar is basically a homing beacon. If something involves cinnamon rolls, cinnamon toast, cinnamon sugar or a closely related cinnamon-based delivery system, Armon is interested.

So, yes, we stopped. It became one of those tiny trip memories that had nothing to do with an itinerary and somehow still sticks.

We also attempted an afternoon drive to San Luis Obispo after the twins’ nap. It was worth trying, but the timing and weather worked against us. The drive was harder on the kids than staying around Pismo, and San Luis Obispo was significantly hotter that afternoon. We ate, wandered into a couple of small shops and ultimately decided not to force it.

That was probably the right decision. With 14-month-olds, knowing when to abandon the theoretical itinerary is occasionally the itinerary.

The toddler milk problem

At some point, inevitably, we needed milk. The toddler milk saga is apparently eternal.

One thing we hadn’t realized before the trip was how easy it would be to reach a proper grocery store from the hotel. We had packed more food than we needed because we weren’t sure whether we’d have access to a real grocery store or just smaller convenience shops.

We did. A grocery store was only a very short drive away, and once we realized that, we knew exactly what we would change next time: bring less. There was no reason to pack the car as though Pismo Beach existed beyond the reach of milk.

What we would do differently now

Looking back, we don’t wish we had packed more into this trip. At 14 months, the point was that we didn’t have to. Two nights, the pier, meals we could walk to, some pool time, a little exploring and a room where the twins could comfortably play was enough.

Now that they’re older, we would make Pismo a little bigger. We would spend more time exploring San Luis Obispo. We’d like to take them to one of the nearby farms where they can see and interact with animals. We’d do Shell Beach and the tide pools. And we’d take them down toward Oceano and the sand dunes.

That last one is particularly personal for Linda. She grew up going there and remembers walking the beach and collecting sand dollars. At 14 months, the dunes probably would have been more work than magic. A little older, it becomes something she would love to share with them.

That’s one of the things we’re learning about traveling with twins: the destination can stay the same while the trip changes completely depending on their age.

Would we stay here again?

We would stay at Inn at the Pier again. For this particular trip, the location was exactly what we needed. We could valet the car, get everyone upstairs and then largely stop thinking about driving. The pier, beach, restaurants, coffee and places to wander were right outside, and with two 14-month-olds that made the entire trip feel easier.

The room was also one of the better standard-room setups we had found with the twins. We had enough floor space for our floor bed and their toys, the couch gave us another usable zone, and the balcony meant that even after early bedtime started dictating our evenings, we still felt like we were in Pismo Beach rather than simply sitting in a hotel room waiting for morning.

Would we do Pismo differently now that the kids are older? Absolutely. We’d explore farther. But at 14 months, the fact that we didn’t have to was exactly the point.

WBT Quick Notes