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02/22/2005 Archived Entry: "Boston, MA, and Ottawa, Ontario"

My resolution to update my blog more frequently hasn't met with much success so far this year, has it ... well, I'll keep trying!

I just returned from a five-day trip to Boston and Cambridge, Massachusettes, where I drove two high school debate teams from the Philadelphia area to one of the largest competitions in the US at Harvard University. We stayed at the DoubleTree Guest Suites Boston, one of the nicest hotels I've stayed in on a multiple day trip. The photo above right was the beautiful view at dusk overlooking the Charles River and the Boston skyline from my 10th floor hotel room.

However, it was also about the most bus-unfriendly hotel I've ever seen; cabs often blocked the narrow curved entrance to the hotel, where there was room for only one bus at a time in front of the main entrance (but five coaches had groups at the hotel while I was there). And bus parking was "across the street" -- in this case it meant walking across nine lanes of traffic where there was no pedestrian walkway, to park in an area designed for trucks to park trailers temporarily off exit 18 of Interstate 90. The hotel is very isolated -- very easy to get to as far as driving is concerned, but there are no stores or restaurants within walking distance. The only options for food (other than the very expensive hotel restaurants) was to order take-out or to drive downtown to park by the Christian Science Center and visit one of the more reasonably priced restaurants downtown -- still not cheap.

Earlier this month I had my first trip to Ottawa, Ontario (Canada) with a teen hockey team. Ottawa is a beautiful city, and one of the most bus friendly of the Canadian cities I've visited (much more bus friendly than Toronto, for instance). There are numerous places around the city signed specifically for tour bus parking. I stayed at the Capital Hill Hotel just two blocks from Parliament (the main Parliament building is shown in photo at left) in downtown Ottawa. There was no bus parking at the hotel, although they had a reasonably large bus loading/dropoff zone directly in front of the hotel (room for three motorcoaches). Parking was about a mile and a half away, and each morning/evening I took a taxi ride back and forth -- with the taxi fare reimbursed by the hotel. They did their best to be very hospitable, especially for a city hotel.