The Stuck at the Airport team is a longtime fan of Spokane, WA.
The city is home to, among other treasures, a giant red Radio Flyer wagon.
Its airport, Spokane International (GEG), offers a free car wash to anyone who uses the parking garage.
In 1974, this eastern Washington city became the smallest city to host a World’s Fair and a citywide 50th-anniversary celebration of Expo ’74 is running through July 4, 2024.
We stopped at the Expo ’74 exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture and got a kick out of the list of bands and other performers who visited the fair. Marcel Marceau, Gordon Lightfoot, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, The Modern Jazz Quartet and Chicago, were all there.
As was Liberace.
The exhibit displays the poster advertising Mr. Showmanship’s appearance (prices starting at $3) and the lovely beaded blue costume and boots he was wearing in the poster and in his show.
While in town, we stayed at the Davenport Grand, which sits right across the street from Riverfront Park and is one of the five unique hotels in the city’s The Davenport Hotel Collection.
Four of the hotels – The Davenport Grand, the 110-year-old Historic Davenport, the Davenport Tower, and the Davenport Lusso – are part of the Marriott Autograph Collection.
And each hotel adds a $20 amenity fee to the room rate.
Usually, hotel amenity fees irk us. But this one feels like a good deal.
The fee covers high-speed internet; a standard offering of amenity fees these days.
But guests also receive a coupon for a Washington wine tasting that includes two small glasses of wine, plus another coupon for $20 food & beverage credit which can be used anytime at any of the brand’s 11 restaurants & bars in town.
We got great value from this by using our coupons during Happy Hour at the Safari Room at the Davenport Tower and were pleased that the wines offered in the tasting, which we loved, were included in the discounted Happy Hour wines.
If we weren’t so busy enjoying the festivities at Riverfront Park and visiting the Expo ’74 exhibit, our amenity fee would have also covered our use of the hotel’s bicycles – and helmets – for two hours; any number of fitness classes at the local branch of The Union; and unlimited rides on the hotel’s shuttle van to any attraction or location within a half mile of the hotel. If the weather hadn’t been so nice, we would have used that shuttle quite a bit.
The Davenport Collection team values this amenity package at $125.
And while not every guest will take advantage of all the items covered by the amenity fee, as amenity fees go, this $20 is easy, and fun, to recoup.