My trip to a conference at Wesleyan University in Connecticut went well overall. First and foremost, the conference was great. Second, my air travel went smoothly, with no major delays or other trouble. Third, I had a good time hanging out with new and old friends at the conference.
But I also made a pretty bad choice as to the hotel where I would stay. I picked the cheaper option, when I should have done more research to figure out which of the two had the better location.
So – three tips to find a better hotel next time:
First, heck the distance from the hotel to the conference site, and choose the hotel with the shorter distance! The cheaper hotel this time was miles from the conference site, and though the hotel furnished a shuttle, walking the half-mile to campus each morning and evening would have been great.
Second, use Google Maps to figure out where nearby stores and such are located, but also use StreetView to see if I can walk to any of them.
Before this trip, I could see that my chosen hotel was less than half a mile from a mall with a grocery store and several restaurants, but I didn’t see that that half mile could not be covered on foot, thanks to a ridiculously narrow overpass.
Third, ask at the front desk about the view from my room. This time, I got this, which isn’t much of a view at all:
