My life does not have enough random excitement in it. I mean, yes, I get to go to the opera and examine blood splatter and party with famous people and have creative stalkers and am given awesome things because I am just so adorable – but I need more. More adventure, more excitement, more craziness. I want it all. I want to be the girl with the most cake. I want to fuck you like an animal. I want to rock and roll all night and party every day.
So, with this in mind, I decided to take advantage of Travelocity’s new Top Secret program. It works the same as Hotwire or Priceline – you give the date and city, and it’ll spit out heavily discounted hotel rates. The only catch: you don’t get to find out where you’re staying until you’ve booked the reservation. I’m feeling adventurous this afternoon, so I went ahead and booked Ed and I into a random hotel in Portland for our road trip in early June. The mystery locations made available to me were three 4-star hotels with prices ranging from $85CDN to $105CDN per night, so I went with the one with the most attractive amenities: non-smoking and free wireless.
Looks like we’ll be staying at the Governor Hotel in downtown Portland for our trip. Hooray! I actually know exactly where this is; I took a picture of it the last time we were in Portland. It’s right on a streetcar line, and while I’m sure there’s going to be a ridiculous valet charge per night, it still comes below what we wanted to spend on a hotel for our trip. Ed’s first instinct was to whine about the valet, which I am ignoring – it’s his fault we’re not going in May when the rates are cheaper to begin with, so let me have my goddamn valet parking or so help me god you’ll never get another blowjob again.
Adventure!
delicious juice dot com 
Like Ed I have an allergic reaction to paying for valet parking. Luckily, you can get away with avoiding valet in downtown Portland very easily. Here’s what I do:
Street parking in downtown PDX is free after after 7pm and there are a number of Smart Park lots all over downtown (http://www.portlandonline.com/smartpark/index.cfm?c=35506).
So, during the day, just park in Smart Park which is 1.50/hour for the first 4 hours, then goes up after that depending on the lot. You can also get it validated by a ton of places around downtown to make it even cheaper.
Then, after 7pm, just move it to the street when it’s free. When I was in Portland for the Easter long weekend we paid about $6/day for parking all-in.
Love Portland!
why not take the train down and save the hassle of vehicle storage entirely?
Hanging out in Portland is only half our trip – we’re actually driving down via the 101 and spending a couple days on the coast :) Otherwise that would be an awesome idea; I’ve taken the train to Seattle and I want to do it again. A train to Portland would be so fun!