Getting there
and
The Imperial Hotel

The trip consisted of four people: Mark, Motor, Jaime, and me. We made our reservation about a month prior and every thing went smoothly except that the flights were delayed of course because of the weather. Tickets from Southwest round-trip were about $145 out of Oakland. Motors ticket out of SFO were about the same. Neither flight was booked up and there was room to stretch on the flight.

Fun thing about the Portland Airport is that they have a brewery inside it. They also have "Tied" houses of several breweries near the gates like the Widmer one in the C section gates. This is a great way to spend your time and the beer isn't that expensive (around $3 bucks). It doesn’t seem so bad to wait for a flight if your having a cold one.

In order to get from the airport to the downtown area, we walked around to the bus depot and took a public bus. The day pass is $3.25 and the one way pass is $1 and change so we always bought the day passes. The bus ride takes about 45 minutes and drops you off about 2 blocks from the hotel.

Imperial Hotel

Room rates were 96 bucks... up from last year but still reasonable. The hotel is in the middle of downtown and close to many pubs, either by walking or by transit. I’ve tried other hotels over the years and most of them have gone up in price to the point of ridiculous.

In the old days, we used to stay in the downtown Hilton when it was cheap like $85 bucks a night. Since then the renovated and now its close to $185. Bummer. It had a great view but otherwise its just two blocks from the Imperial and the rooms are about the same.

The Imperial is the best hotel we've found that has reasonable rates. If your planning on going to Portland for the Brewers Fest or the AHA conference, this is my recommendation.