Portland...the Adventure

On Tuesday the 10th, Matt, Sam and I piled into our little Mazda, packed to the gills, and drove the 6 hours to Portland, Oregon. Matt was to attend a Tree Fruit Disease Conference and Sam and I were to accompany for support, good city eats, and the luxury of the downtown Hilton.

So, as some of you may know I have travelled a fair amount in my short lifetime and I have been in most of the major cities in our fair country. However, I NEVER stay in really nice places and I was very excited to be staying at one of the famous Hilton Hotels right in downtown Portland! I was imagining being waited on left and right and having all the usual feed amenities for free, 5,000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, and whirlpool tub in our room with a mini bar...etc, you get the idea. So, here is my critique of the Portland Hilton:

1. You aren't getting what you are paying for! Our room on the 12th floor had a nice view of the office building across the street and some of the downtown area. Not bad and I enjoyed the corner room with lots of windows. We were paying $115/night. In the room we had 2, double beds (okay, you co-sleeping families know that a double bed is hard enough for two parents to sleep in, let alone an entire family. We tried to get a room with 2 queen size beds...no go, it was either the 2 double beds or one king..we stuck with the two double beds), a tv, two night stands and 2 telephones..oh, and an alarm clock that allowed us to plug in our Mp3 player (that was pretty cool). The bathroom was no nicer than one at a Best Western. However, the sheets and beds were amazing!! There were feather beds and the sheets were like 5,000 thread count Egyptian Cotton!!

2. Parking was not included! Okay, so Maybe I am not a city person, but we had to pay extra for parking...on top of out $115/night...another $18/day and that was for self parking! If we had chosen valet, it was $23/day. I can see paying something for parking,after all, our car was safe and indoors, but $18/day! Geesh!

3. Internet was not free! Yes, on top of the $115/ night charge (which I might add was a conference room rate, the rooms usually go for $125-$150/night) they charged $9.95/24 hours of hi-speed internet access, though we could access it in our room. If we used the computer supplied by the Hilton in the lobby the rate was $25/minute! I stayed at a Comfort Inn here in Wenatchee (also a 3 diamond establishment according to the 2005 AAA catalogue), and internet was FREE!

4. The staff was great! All of the staff that I had interactions with (including much help from the concierges for directions, the waitstaff in the restaurant, the housekeepers and the front desk folks) were wonderful and very helpful.

Okay, so all-in-all our total bill when we left on Friday was over $500 (including some meals we had charged to the room)!! Now, WSU is picking up a majority of that so I really can't complain....HOWEVER, having stayed there on someone else's dollar, I now know that for $115+/night plus the cost of parking, I would stay somewhere else. I was curious after our stay what AAA had to say about it so I looked it up and the Portland Downtown Hilton was rated with 3 diamonds, middle of the road. I would agree with that! I expected more from you, Paris!!

Okay enough about the hotel...Portland itself was great! It rained the entire time were there, but we jerry rigged a poncho rain shelter for Sam in the stroller and donned our waterproof shoes and explored. We found...

1. A great boheme neighborhood called the Hawthorne District (Thanks, Jane!) with some great Indian and Thai food, an awesome health food store with the best vegan brownies in the world and some really hip little shops!

2. The Portland Zoo! Great fun and one of the nicest zoos I have been to in this country! Very well maintained, easy to get around and small enough you could see it all in a morning, maybe longer with older kids and no rain!

3. The Portland Children's Museum! AWESOME!!! Well worth the $14 ($7 for me and $7 for Sam) admission. There was a travelling Sesame Street exhibit well designed for kids and adults to remember their childhoods, amazing little exploration rooms all designed for the toddler/preschool age, but also for older kids with a water room ,a tree house/building room, an art WING, a dig pit, a miniature grocery store with all the fixin's! I HIGHLY recommend this for anyone who visits Portland with small kids!

4. Re-discovered POWELLS books. A great new/used book store that encompasses an entire city block. Now, Sam threw one of his biggest tantrums here and after leaving and a 2 block walk in the rain, he calmed and I was able to look for about 20 minutes. A great place to spend a few hours (or all day) without kids!

It was a nice trip and we really enjoyed the city. There will be another entry later about what is was like being the "wife of" at a predominately male conference, travelling in the city with a very energetic toddler and how much I am glad to live in a smaller town! More later...