Portlandtown, Let's Go!!!!

I am heading to Portland, Oregon this coming weekend! My friend Hollie had invited me to come visit her months ago, once she remembered that I have a week off for Spring Break every year. This invitation was followed shortly by three very dear friends of mine picking up and moving out of the Bay Area and up north.  I’ve taken all of this as a general sign that I should visit.

Here’s the catch: Hollie lives in a Victorian. Like much of the Bay Area, Portland seems to be teeming with either old Victorians or Craftsman style houses. So, while I am essentially going up there to visit her, I can’t and won’t be staying with her. And so, the search for accessible and affordable accommodations began.

Last summer, when I went to visit Portland, I opted to stay at the Motel 6 nearest her place.  That was manageable financially for a weekend, but I plan to spend the entire week there, so I needed something much more affordable.  I have lots of friends who travel as much as they can, but none of them have physical disabilities.  I realized that they might not be able to give the best advice about where to stay as a result, but I asked anyway, figuring it was as good a place as any to start.

I have discovered that my friends mainly stay with other friends when they travel. My friends are smart & frugal people, obviously.  Alas! This time that’s a no go for me. On the occasion that my traveling buddies can’t stay at a friend’s house, they use hostels, Kayak, Airbnb, and Couchsurfing.  I have first hand experience in “accessible” travel arrangements going wrong as a result of using the more popular trip booking sites- mainly because the hotel rooms available at steep discounts on those sites aren’t guaranteed to be a specific type of room, i.e. wheelchair accessible (which I MUST call bullshit on by the way, but that doesn’t mean that wasn’t the explanation I was handed at the time). I’ve had mixed success with the sites, and I’ve stopped using them as a result. I just can’t deal with the unpredictability…. or the discriminatory practices.

I’ve never stayed at a hostel or arranged a place to stay through Couchsurfing or Airbnb.  I decided to look into them, since I had started planning this trip so late (according to my own standards at least) and needed to find something affordable, or face not making the trip at all. I had no idea that even trying to book a place to stay would become so complicated!!! I’m actually feeling slightly panicked just thinking about the past week and I haven’t even begun to write about it. Yikes.

So, about two weeks ago I started my search for a place to stay by checking out hostels in Portland. I searched the Hostelling International site for availability at the one hostel in SE Portland- HI Portland Hawthorne District. Great neighborhood with lots to do. It shows that they have availability, but the HI website is problematic as far as accessibility is concerned.  I could book a hostel bed, but there is no way to specifically book accessible accommodations. Nor is there any mention on the HI site of whether or not the hostel in question is even accessible. So I start to panic/wonder, and navigate over to the website for that specific hostel. And again, there is no mention of whether or not this place is accessible. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Surely, I just haven’t found the information yet. I convince myself that I haven’t and proceed to peruse the entire site, to no avail. 

In a desperate move, I book a bed for the entire week, so that I have something  lined up that I can actually afford. It was after 10 p.m. at the time, so I had to wait until the morning to find out whether or not I would be able to stay there. I shoot them an email asking about their wheelchair accessible features, and go to bed. It was a fitful sleep, no doubt about it.

To their credit, they promptly get back to me the next morning. Unfortunately, it is to tell me that the hostel is not wheelchair accessible at this time.  I correspond back and forth with them asking about specific details of the layout- where the bathrooms are, where my bed would be, how many stairs the porch has, etc.  I also walk with braces and crutches, so I could in theory have stayed there. But there is a fine line for me between being active in my braces and crutches and overdoing it. Overdoing it tends to land me in the ER with incredibly painful lower back spasms.  And I tend to cross that line without realizing it. So, staying here could potentially come at a huge personal cost to me.  Also, if I were committing to climbing stairs every day, I might as well have stayed with Hollie and saved the money. None of this was an ideal solution. And so I continued to search for other options while holding my spot at the hostel.