The Kimber Modern Hotel Review and Photoblog, January 2015 (Or Finding a Place to Stay in Austin)

The Kimber Modern is a hip modern luxury boutique hotel located in the South Congress, Travis Hill area of downtown Austin. This vibrant area is known for many gourmet restaurants, vintage, and indie shops.  This is also where you would find the Continental Club and other live music venues outside of the touristy 6^th street area.  Gourmet joints like Torchy’s Tacos, the Odd Duck, Lick Ice Cream, Elizabeth Street are all located in this area.

As we spoke about in our last blog post, finding a place to stay in downtown Austin can be a challenge.  Many mega-chain hotels downtown offer the standard hotel experience at high prices since they cater to conference go-ers, but for a unique boutique hotel experience, we decided to stay at the Kimber Modern.

What sets this place apart from other boutique hotels are their unique modern architectural designs and stellar all-inclusive perks (there is no extra charge for all the gourmet beverages and snacks you can enjoy here).

The Kimber Modern is modern in every sense of this word.  You enter the hotel by keying in your code to the door; then you walk up a flight of stairs into an outdoor open courtyard where you are brought to a beautifully landscaped modern outdoor space. 

All the rooms at the Kimber Modern are arranged to surround a private common outdoor courtyard perfect for lounging; if you'd like to lie down under the sun there are a few hammocks to relax on

Our room, the White Suite came with a private bamboo garden and plenty of outdoor furniture for holding a small private gathering

The low rise modern exterior of the Kimber Modern, be surprised for so much that lies behind this modest facade!

After keying in your code to get through the front door, this staircase takes you up to the secluded unique design world of the Kimber Modern

The private courtyard of the Kimber Modern with lots of comfortable couches and mini fireplace flames that light up at night.  Just grab some wine (included as part of your stay) in the commons area and hang out in this private lounge without the crowds!

The rooms are futuristic and luxurious in every way.  Each room comes with custom built modern furnishings & decor, paintings by local artists, bathrooms enclosed in frosted glass walls (inquire to find out which rooms have this), slanted angular ceilings and asymmetrical room layouts, and brightly lit rooms.  Every room also has a different unique look and feel and you find yourself exploring all the fine design details when you enter the room.  The room shown here is the white suite.

We like how even their smallest room is much more spacious than many boutique hotel rooms in the downtown area. 

The staff here gives great attention to detail to the needs of their guests.  Bathrooms all have Malin and Goetz shampoos, body wash and lotions, shaving razors, makeup remover, Q-tips, toothpaste, and aromatic bath salts in rooms with a tub.  Every room has a fridge with wine, beer, and filtered water.  Larger rooms also come with a private backyard with comfortable lounge chairs surrounded by landscaped bamboos.  If you need to get work done in, the desk all have Italian Flos lamps and Eames chairs.  If you’d like to turn on some music, just plug your ipad or iphone into the in-room speaker.

Spacious high ceiling bathrooms with an extra large tub; the frosted glass walls bring in more light into the bathroom from the adjacent rooms

Our room, the White Suite came with an ultra comfortable plush queen bed and paintings by local independent artists

The workspace in each room comes equipped with a minibar and midcentury furniture; our room had an Eames chair and an Italian modern lamp

Contents of the mini-bar : filtered water, local beer, and fine French wine; all this is included in the price of your stay so feel free to enjoy everything in your mini-bar fridge!

The Kimber Modern is an all inclusive (adult only) hotel, so that means all bookings with the Kimber Modern include refreshments.  The price of your stay drinks in your hotel mini-bar, a late afternoon happy hour in their lounge, coffee/lattes/cappuccinos, sodas made with Sonoma soda syrups, snacks in their lounge (yogurt, organic teas, fruits, etc), and breakfast served with pound-cake, fresh squeezed OJ, eggs (with many different flavored salts and peppers to season with), freshly chopped variety of fruits.

All stays come with a delicious self serve breakfast in the common living room area

Hard boiled eggs for breakfast came with a variety of flavored gourmet salts and peppers you can use as flavoring; here we used smoked pepper and Bolivian Rose salt - we couldn't believe how easy it was to make hard-boiled eggs so tasty, this has become an everyday breakfast item for us now

If you had all these seasonings laid out at home like they do at the Kimber Modern breakfast, you'd have perfect tasty hard boiled eggs every - day!

While modern and technologically advanced, the hotel has a very homey intimate setting.  Cassie, the hotel manager is very welcoming and can give you many great tips about different areas of Austin to explore.  With only seven units surrounding a common courtyard, you can enjoy everything from their courtyard hammocks to their living room lounge computer without too many people around you; at times you feel like you do have much of the space to yourself.

One a nice day, the courtyard of the Kimber Modern is the perfect place for lounging.  It features a modern waterfall, outdoor fireplaces, and comfortable lounge chairs.  And it’s located right next to their lounge where you can help yourself to everything from artisanal sodas to fine French wine.

The lounge of the Kimber Modern has many amenities such as an Apple Computer for using the web and printing, modern lounge chairs, dining tables, a fridge with many refreshments and a Miele coffee drink maker.  The lounge also has a selection of design books and books about Texas and Austin so you can plan for places to go in either downtown Austin or the Texas wine country (which is a a short 30 minute drive west of downtown Austin).

We’ve taken some photos to share with you about our neat experience of staying at the Kimber Modern; we were only there for two days, but wish we’d stayed longer.  Every room at the Kimber Modern looks different so you can be sure that there’s something new to experience in every stay! 

The communal kitchen in the Kimber Modern living room lounge, here you can find all sorts of drinks and snacks to enjoy during your stay

We love the Miele coffee - cappuccino - latte maker!  Organic non-caffeinated teas are also available

This is the Vivreau water cooler - it dispenses flat filtered water one one side and filtered carbonate water on the other side.  There are also artisanal flavored soda syrups you can use to make your own flavored sodas!  We especially love the cherry cola and lemon ginger flavored syrups, and they are all natural.

Not only is the Kimber Modern located at a safe and prime location (this area is known to locals as Soco, short for South Congress Avenue), but this is where you would stay to enjoy the finest in Austin’s modern, luxury architectural living.

The waterfall in the courtyard gives off a nice soothing sound of nature, coupled with the lush green landscaping, it's hard to believe you are in an urban metropolis.