From the start, everything went perfectly well. I was granted early access, a huge help since I'd just come in from Anchorage on a red-eye after a week in Denali hiking around. Napping immediately instead or propping myself up with caffeine at any of the nearby coffee shops was sanity-saving.

I didn't know anything about Portland prior to arriving. I'd knew there'd be options nearby - when I end up in new places, I use a Yelp map to search for coffee shops and try to find a place to stay that's central to them. I learned that this spot is squarely in the middle of all the scene-y stuff. There are lots of good restaurants nearby, a couple bars, and access to public transportation. S. Hawthorne Boulevard has a million things on it - novelty food carts to high-end dispensaries - and it's less than a block away. Crawling this one street could take a day of your time.

Back to the space though.

It's a little dark down there, but I appreciated this after days and days of midnight sun up north. It was easy to pass out on the comfortable bed in that darkness. No sirens, noise, almost no sounds at all got down there. Helpful for the sleeping.

The bathroom doesn't get much ventilation, so the shower stayed wet and the towels stayed damp over the duration, but everything in there is squeaky clean. The built-in sauna room provided a vacation within a vacation on a couple nights, and the whole studio would smell so sweet after that. Also helpful for the sleeping.

I liked that there was more than enough room to park my car on the streets. While tons of nearby Portland is accessible without a car, as I discovered at the start of my time here, having the car provided access to parts of the sprawling city that would take a too much time to get to otherwise, like the public pools. I get a kick out of swimming laps in the cities I visit. This too is helpful for the sleeping.

Long and short: this is a cool centrally located spot, and you'd make out in terms of cost for value in renting it.