“The elevator smells faintly of coconut sunscreen at all hours, even at 11 PM, as if the building itself just came off the pool deck.”

The 17th Street Causeway is not a street that invites you to linger. It's a four-lane bridge crossing with marine supply shops, boat dealerships, and the kind of gas stations that sell live bait. You drive it to get somewhere — Port Everglades, maybe, or the beach. The cab from FLL takes eleven minutes if the drawbridge is down, twenty-three if it isn't, and you'll know which it is because the driver will sigh before you even see the water. When the bridge is up, everyone just sits there watching a sixty-foot sailboat glide through at the pace of a man walking a dog. This is the part of Fort Lauderdale that still belongs to boats, not brunch. The hotel rises from the south side of the causeway like it's been arguing with the skyline since 1965 — because it has.

Pier Sixty-Six was a Rat Pack-era landmark that spent decades being the place your parents went on their honeymoon, then spent a few more decades being the place that needed a renovation. The renovation happened. It reopened, and the bones are still there — the revolving rooftop lounge, the marina, the mid-century swagger — but the rooms are new, the lobby smells like money, and the pool situation has multiplied. Whether this is progress depends on how you feel about a lobby bar that charges $22 for a mezcal cocktail.

The tower and the water

The defining feature is the Intracoastal Waterway, which the hotel sits directly on, and which you see from nearly every angle. The tower rooms face either the water or the port, and the difference matters. Water side: you wake up to the sound of halyards clinking against masts and watch yachts the size of apartment buildings slide past your window at seven in the morning. Port side: you get cruise ships, container cranes, and a sunrise that turns the industrial skyline into something unexpectedly beautiful. I'd take the port side. Nobody photographs it, which means nobody's performing for it.

The room itself is clean-lined and competent — pale wood, a deep soaking tub, floor-to-ceiling glass. The bed is good. The AC is aggressive in the way Florida AC must be. What's notable is what's missing: there's no minibar clutter, no leather-bound compendium of spa treatments, no turndown chocolate. It feels less decorated than edited. The bathroom has a rain shower that takes about forty-five seconds to warm up, which is fine, except the glass door doesn't quite seal at the bottom and you'll soak the floor if you're not careful. A small towel on the tile solves it. You adapt.

The marina is the hotel's real living room. It wraps around the south side, and in the late afternoon it fills with a mix of boat owners doing actual boat things — hosing decks, coiling lines — and hotel guests pretending to know what a cleat hitch is. There's a restaurant down at dock level, Pier Top, and another called Pelican, which is more casual and better for solo eating. The fish dip at Pelican is the thing to order. It comes with saltines, not fancy crackers, and this felt like a deliberate choice I respected.

“The drawbridge goes up, the traffic stops, and for three minutes the whole causeway just watches a boat pass. Nobody honks. This is the local religion.”

Walk south along the seawall path and you're at Lauderdale Marine Center in ten minutes, which is not a tourist attraction but is fascinating if you've ever wanted to see a 200-foot yacht out of the water, propped up on blocks like a beached whale in dry dock. Walk north across the causeway and you hit a strip of no-name Cuban cafés along SE 15th Street — the cortadito at any of them will cost you two dollars and taste better than anything the hotel makes. The hotel knows this, I think. The concierge mentioned the cafés without being asked.

The pool deck is where the hotel leans hardest into its new identity. There are multiple pools, a DJ on weekends, cabanas you can rent, and a crowd that skews younger and louder than the marina crowd. It's two different hotels, really — the marina belongs to people who sail, and the pool belongs to people who post. Both are fine. The rooftop bar, Pier Top, still revolves, slowly, one full rotation every ninety minutes. You order a drink, sit still, and Fort Lauderdale turns around you. I watched a container ship enter the port from one side and a pelican dive-bomb a mullet from the other, all without moving my chair. I am not above admitting this was the highlight.

Walking out

Checking out, the causeway feels different than it did arriving. The drawbridge is up again. A catamaran slides through the gap, unhurried, and the line of cars just waits. A woman in the truck ahead of me leans out her window to take a photo. The boat clears, the bridge lowers, the traffic moves. You cross back over the Intracoastal and the hotel shrinks in the mirror, its tower catching the morning light.

If the bridge is down, you can be at FLL departures in eight minutes. If it's up, grab the cortadito. You have time.

Rooms at Pier Sixty-Six start around $350 a night in shoulder season and climb past $700 on winter weekends. The marina-view upgrade is worth it if you're here for the water. If you're here for the pool scene, save the money — you won't be in the room much anyway.