Choosing a Hotel in Portland

I have finally decided on a hotel to stay at in Portland when we travel down there with the kids next month. There are so many factors to consider that it took me a while to sort through the options and figure out what our priorities are.

If price or location were the top priority, we would have gone with one of the smaller hotels right in downtown or the Pearl district, but many of the rooms seemed quite small with 2 double beds very close together.

We came very close to choosing the Embassy Suites hotel. It is just two blocks from the light rail line and pretty close in. I was liking it because of the separate bedroom and sitting room, the hot breakfast included and the pool.

In the end, we decided to go with the Residence Inn - Portland Downtown/Riverplace. This is the reason why. The #1 reason that we do not travel more is sleep. My kids are fabulous sleepers at home but usually we have some sort of trouble when traveling, especially with falling asleep. If my husband and I do not get our sleep at night, we are very tired and have a hard time enjoying our vacation.

At this point, it is mainly the younger one, so I am hoping in a few years this will not be as big a factor. So for now, the lure of a 2 bedroom suite was too much to resist. There are actually 2 separate bedrooms and a sitting room so we will have plenty of space and the sleeping experience will be much more similar to home. And if someone has trouble, we have a much better chance for most everyone else to stay asleep. With all that space it is not the cheapest option but it turned out to be cheaper than the 1 bedroom suites at the Embassy Suites.

(The weekday rate is astronomical but the weekend AAA rate is quite affordable.)

The Residence Inn also has a pool and a hot breakfast included plus a bonus of high speed internet. So really the only factor I was concerned about is location. It is not as close in to downtown as the other hotels I was looking at. But it is right at a streetcar stop so we can take it up to the light rail line or very close to the train station. Also we are devoting one full day to OMSI and we can just walk there from the hotel.

(Side note: This is a popular way to get to OMSI anyway if you don't have a car... take the streetcar to the same stop and then walk over the Hawthorne Bridge. If we had picked the Embassy Suites, then I was going to look into bus routes but we might possibly have taken the same walk)

*Note: I have written a bunch of posts about Portland so if you want to read more, click on the Portland Label at the end of the post, and you will see all the Portland entries.