A few days ago Troy, my boyfriend, had an early morning flight that he really didn’t want to wake up early for. His flight was at 6:30, but the airport is an hour away from where we live, so neither of us was looking forward to the 4am wake-up. Then, he got bumped to standby and was told that his best shot at getting a seat would be to get there 2-3 hours early. Hmmmmm. That’s when we decided to get a hotel.
Troy chose the Red Lion Portland Airport because it’s only a few minutes from the airport and decently priced. When I dropped Troy off at the airport at 4:30, we were both pretty happy that we only had to get up at 4:15am in order for him to shower, get dressed and get all his stuff back in the car. I was awake for about 20 minutes, maybe, cuz I didn’t get out of bed until he was about ready to go and then I got right back in bed after dropping him off. It was nice. Definitely a plus being so close to the airport.
Now, for the room.
The first room they gave us, room 245, smelled pretty bad. It wasn’t cigarette smoke, but it was definitely smoke of some kind. It was awful and made us both a bit sick to our stomachs. There was no way either of us would be able to sleep with that, so I called down to the front desk. The young woman at the front desk was very polite and as soon as I said that the room smelled like smoke, she said she’d have a new room for us in just a moment. About 5 minutes later, we were in a new room.
Unfortunately, the new room was stinky, too. And this one really did smell like cigarettes. Yuck.
I wanted to go get another room and was halfway down the hall to do so when Troy called me back to the room and said he’d just deal with it. He doesn’t like hassle and he doesn’t like feeling like he’s being a nuisance, so he said he’d give it 15 minutes and see how he felt then. He used his inhaler several times and was clearly uncomfortable, but he didn’t want to keep bouncing from room to room all night long. It was already after 9 and he had to get up at 4am. So, we stayed.
Our stay wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t the best night we’ve ever had. Here is a rundown of the pros and cons of our stay.
PROS
- As stated before, the hotel is only about 5-7 minutes from the airport. Really great for those early morning or late night flights.
- The beds were pretty comfy
- The pillows were super soft
- The water gets hot really fast (almost too fast, i burned my hand 🙁 )
- The AC/heater unit works really well
- All the employees and maintenance people I ran into were super polite
- Most of the outside walkways are lit
- Mini-fridge and microwave in the room
- Nice selection of tv channels
- Small closet with hangers and ironing board
- In-room coffee maker
- Fitness center
- Pool
- Open lawn
- Guest laundromat
- Free parking
- On-site restaurant
CONS
- As stated before, both rooms we were in were rather stinky. The rooms say they are non-smoking, but it is very clear that those rooms had been smoked in.
- There was a black body hair, about an inch long, on my bed when I pulled the coverlet back – yuck
- The walls were super thin and we could hear people talking in the hall and walking outside. After about 10 min of listening to people open and close doors and walk around the halls while we were trying to sleep, we turned the AC on to drown out the noise
- The only part of the walkway that didn’t have light was when it went through a group of large bushes
- Nobody told us the door handles on the doors by the parking lot went up, so it took us a minute to get the door open
- The battery on the door lock for the door by the parking lot was dying, which was also why we had trouble getting in – maintenance was changing the battery when I was leaving the next morning
- The bathroom is tiny and cramped – not much room to get dressed in there if you’re not comfortable getting dressed in front of whoever else is in the room
- The guest directory said there was a room service menu in the back of the book, but there wasn’t one there
Overall, it wasn’t the worst place we’ve ever stayed. It was comfortable and mostly clean, but the walls were just too thin and the rooms smelled kinda bad. If the rooms didn’t smell so bad, I’d be open to staying there again, but I have a hard time with bad smells. Troy said he would absolutely not stay there again, both for the smell and the thin walls. It really wasn’t a good place for a light sleeper with asthma to stay. He didn’t get much sleep from the noise and from the smokey smell triggering his asthma. At least it didn’t trigger a full-on asthma attack, but it did cause him to use his inhaler several times. So, we will most likely not every stay here again.
Here are some photos I took while there. I forgot to take my camera, so these are from my cell phone.
