Y’all I have a weakness…ok other than coffee, I love beautiful hotels. As a former meeting planner, part of my job was to travel to different hotels and find the best fit for a specific group of attendees. I would travel for about a week staying at different hotels in the same city and putting them to the test. I decided to hang up that hat when my first little peanut came along, but my love of finding a wonderful property for our now little party of five is pretty strong. If you’re traveling to the Jersey Shore, we suggest you check out the Icona Golden Inn.
We stayed at the newly renovated, oceanfront Icona Golden Inn. The property was crisp & clean and the staff was so pleasant and accommodating.
I’m going to be honest with you…. I remade the beds as best I could for the photo since my three little ones moved in before I could catch the perfectly pressed shot 😉
Each of their rooms has a little kitchenette with a compact fridge, Keurig coffee maker, and a microwave. A lot of their rooms including the one we were staying in also had a few sets of dishes, a mini stovetop and a few pots and cooking utensils. You could easily bring some grocery items to do breakfast in the room or an easy lunch like sandwiches or pasta. This is how we like to save on traveling. Food for a family of five can get pretty expensive pretty quickly. Especially when two of our three don’t fill up on the kiddy portions anymore. A couple of meals in the room makes a big difference.
The bathrooms were quite lovely and spacious. And our request for additional towels for our beach loving crew was granted in no time at all. 
There is a small heated pool with plenty of seating. There’s a shallow area for the little ones but it drops off to deeper water quickly. This wasn’t an issue for our older kids, but might be with adventurous toddlers or preschoolers.
They have a fun restaurant, Sandbar Village Beach Bar & Restaurant, on the other side of the pool area where we had lunch and drinks. The service was a little slow, but I’m assuming the poor things got slammed because of the eclipse viewing beach goers. During the summer months they have live music playing here. I’m a sucker for live music. It adds so much to the character of a restaurant or other venue.
We loved Avalon and neighboring Stone Harbor. Gorgeous craftsman style homes line the streets and bike lanes on both sides of the street make it easy for two-wheeled traffic to get around town. There are a bunch of shops, restaurants, bakeries, ice cream shops and even a couple of cute putt-putt golf places to entertain every age.
We had a great time on our quick little trip. If you’re headed to “the shore” we suggest you check it out!