I have always considered myself a pretty low maintenance hotel guest. A clean room, reasonable amount of quiet, an ice machine some where in the building and a comfortable bed. A decent TV and free Wi-Fi are added bonuses.
On our trip to Coeur d’Alene the Letterboxing Chiller also now known as the Hotel Room Chiller booked us in the least expensive hotel/motel room he could find since the baseball district was footing a portion of our stay. We don’t usually spend a lot of our time in our hotel room until evening but it still never hurts to have a decent home base when you are on the road.
Although our hotel room in Coeur d” Alene was clean enough it was incredibly tiny including the bed (see picture at the top of the full-sized bed), and there was a significant amount of road noise as we were up against the freeway on the second floor. We concluded that we were not willing to pay $400 per night to stay at the resort on the lake and everything else non-smoking within miles was booked. We also discovered our first evening that the ice machine was back by the registration office and that Wi-Fi was not complimentary. And in fact you had to go to the registration desk and pay $2.99 per day in person for Wi-Fi. In addition the Wi-Fi was not for your room but for each individual electronic device that you wanted to have Wi-Fi access for. It was almost comical to watch Anthony knock me off my Kindle Fire and in return I would knock him off of his lap top. I think we did this about 4 times and then realized what was happening. We also came back to the hotel twice during our stay to find the cleaning staff dragging cigarettes outside our room while taking a bitch session break. Hope they were blowing their smoke away from our room instead of towards it. Needless to say I was not too sorry to bid our less than desirable hotel in Coeur d’ Alene farewell.
Since we had been on the go all day we decided not to make the drive back to Boise and re-considered our hotel options. As we were leaving town we ended up stopping at the Coeur d’ Alene Casino and Resort. We are not gamblers but the hotel looked nice and we were hoping to have a relaxing evening meal. We upgraded to the $114.00 room from $99.00 that we were told would afford us a slightly larger room and a bed that was a bit more comfortable. The room was very nice and I was thrilled with the differences between our original hotel room and the casino room. We headed out of the room in search of the Ts'elusm Steakhouse but on the way we realized that the look of the hotel and the décor had dramatically changed. We stopped at a second reservation desk and discovered that we were in the Spa Tower. The gal at the desk was unable to give us a tour of any of the sleek and modern rooms or suites (our original room was very rustic) as she was the only one working at the desk. She mentioned that the rooms in the Spa Tower were sold out for the night but asked if we were AAA members. We told her that we were and she said with their special and our AAA discount we could stay in a Spa Suite for $114.00 (typically $300 per night). After I picked my jaw up off the ground I asked if she could upgrade us and switch our rooms. It only took her a few swipes on the keyboard and we were booked into a Spa Suite. SCORE!!!
The suited featured a living room, bar, two bathrooms, a gigantic king sized bed, two flat screen TV’s, a jetted tub and stand up shower with two shower heads, complimentary Wi-Fi, a dining table, robes to relax in, a great view, ice machine 10 steps away and amazing tranquility as you could hear absolutely nothing outside the room. We could have fit our old hotel room (which shall remain unnamed) into just the bedroom section of the Spa Suite. In fact the bed was so amazing that if you moved around in it the other person could not feel you move at all.
As difficult as it was to pull ourselves away from the room we toured the hotel, had a lovely fine dining experience at the Ts'elusm Steakhouse and even left behind $60.00 in the non smoking section of the casino. It was the least we could do for the amazing room they upgraded us to. The spa closed too soon for me to book any services (trust me a massage would have been heavenly before the long drive back to Boise) but we did peek inside right before they closed. The next morning we enjoyed their breakfast buffet at the High Mountain Buffet which was very reasonably priced. I can guarantee you I know where I am staying the next time we stay in Coeur d’Alene. The really amazing part was that they had just started accepting AAA discounts 2 days before our stay (the gal at the original registration desk had forgotten to ask us about AAA). Thank you AAA for a killer deal and spoiling us rotten with an amazing room!
Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort and Hotel - http://www.cdacasino.com
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