Hood River Hotel

photo source

If you have followed along at all you know that we love to get away to Hood River for a relaxing night away with great food and good coffee shops. It's such a romantic place to go, but it's also very much an outdoorsy place to go.

This time we stayed at the Hood River Hotel right in downtown Hood River. It's the best location since it's walking distance from all these great restaurants and coffee shops. Plus they serve a pretty mean breakfast. You will get a $10 gift certificate that comes with your stay to go towards your breakfast.

Eggs benedict with herb polenta

This is our 2nd stay and it will probably be our last time staying. We really do like it and we want to really, really like it enough to stay again, but it's just old.  I think they keep it plenty clean, I mean it smelled great when we walked in, but it's just old and dingy. The showers are older. The floors creeked so much. The people above us got up early and walked around for hours. So needless to say we were awake by 6, even though we didn't actually get up til 8:30.

I am a hotel snob, so don't write it off. Trust me, this place is always busy and because of the fact that it's so old, it's kind of fun to stay in. Just be warned, it's not brand new or renovated for that matter.

Even if we don't stay here, we might make our way back just to eat or listen to some of their fun live music.

Check out the places we ate. We ate at Celilo for dinner and lunch. Yep, that good, we went back. We did a dinner at 3 Rivers Grill and of course our breakfast here at the hotel. In the past we have also stopped at Double Mountain Brewery for great beer and wood fire pizza.

Loved this place and would go back in a heart beat, but read on for how to make it work best for you.  This place is busy, so be prepared.

Read  my previous posts to find out what all we did at the park and other ways to "discover" Magic Mountain.

First off I went directly to the site and looked for a room with breakfast included for the 4 of us.  With taxes and anything else added it came to $313 for 2 nights.  I did so much better than that.  Check out the whole thing HERE. I did call and have her offer me something a little better, but I did best with package deal.

Since this Hotel is near the park(actually it's the closest) I figured it would be run down and marginal.  I was so surprised to see that it was not only very nice looking, but it was very clean.  I was very, very surprised.  It makes going back to your hotel to rest a whole lot more fun.

Our breakfast was a cook to order, so I wasn't really sure what to expect there.  BIG TIP:  When we were there the place was busy, but not off the charts busy.  I am sure during the busy season this place is a zoo and you really, really need to plan accordingly.

This is a sit down breakfast.  There is a pastry/cereal/toast bar plus a fruit bar.  From there you wait for someone to come take your order for hot food which is eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, pancakes and waffles to name a few.  The kitchen cranks it out as fast as they can, but they do get behind. The servers are running like crazy.  DO NOT think you will eat in 15 minutes or less plan accordingly.  It will take some time especially if you have to wait for a table.

I really, really appreciated the shuttle service. I am sure that since they were not super busy that they accommodated us well.  You have to schedule what time you want to be taken to the park and what time you want picked up.  Spots fill up quickly, so book at departures to the park as soon as you arrive.

We had scheduled a pick up, but some other people waiting had not.  Had we not scheduled it, those people would have never gotten picked up.  The nice thing is since the Hotel is so close they can turn around and come back for the next group within 5 minutes.

I am not sure in the busy season how many trips they become willing to take.  They claim one trip every 1/2 hour, but they were doing more.  At $15 a day for parking this was a great benefit to our hotel.  No other hotels in the area do this.  Not only do you save the $15, but you don't have to walk all the way from the parking lot or back to your car at the end of the day. Drop off and Pick up are right there by the entrance.