Simple pleasures are the best
I like haute cuisine. I also like Taco Bell.
Put me up in a five star hotel and I'm a happy man. But I'm beginning to develop a real fondness for the Cambridge Gateway Inn.
First, a disclaimer. Every time I mention the challenges of my Cambridge commute, my Boston friends step up with kind offers of places to stay in the area. While I'm deeply grateful for the hospitality, and while I love you all very much, the simple truth is that I rarely want to see any of you at the end of a Tuesday. Generally I've gotten up around 6am, been in meetings from 10 am to 7pm, had a business dinner with someone and, at 10pm, just want to drink a beer in my underwear and watch hockey, even if this means driving home first and Tivo'ing hockey.
Three years into this commute, I've compiled a comprehensive list of Boston area hotels that can be relied on to have a sub-$100 room with Wifi. There's three hotels on the list, and the Cambridge Gateway Inn, the cheapest of the three, is rapidly becoming the place I choose to hang my hat.
If you've ever driven into Boston on Route 2, you've seen the Gateway. It's between a bombed-out nightclub called Faces and a bowling alley, on the access road to the Alewife T Station. Oddly, the location is part of its charm. The key to a successful day in Cambridge, I believe, is ditching one's car as soon as possible. I generally do this at the Alewife T station, which means a morning that begins at the Gateway involves only a 500m drive... which can literally be accomplished with one's eyes closed. If you're truly broke, you can leave your car at the Gateway and walk to the T, saving $5 in parking.
In the evening, the Gateway's proximity to the bowling alley means that you can buy greasy bar food until 11pm and beer until midnight. (This is a big deal in Massachusetts, where convenience stores don't sell beer. Driving down Massachusetts Avenue into Cambridge to buy beer is definitive evidence that you've planned your day poorly...)
Oh yeah, you can bowl there, too. I brought my ball and shoes with me today and bowled three games after my last obligation today. It's a fairly remarkable joint - candlepin downstairs, tenpin upstairs, computer scoring throughout and bars on both floors. $4 Guiness in a plastic cup, the Bruins on the tube as I bowl my first frames in about two years and I'm a happy, happy man. (And badly out of practice. 99, 122, 104. My goal was to break 100 in at least one game, so I guess I can be proud of that...)
Not quite as much character as my home lanes, but there are some very nice wall murals made out of different shades of brown shag carpet. And there's no smoking, which is a huge improvement over the lanes in North Adams, which take months off my life every time I enter the building.
(By the way, discovering that candlepin appears to be purely a New England phenomenon makes me want to take up that sport as well. I grew up on duckpin... because it was cheaper than tenpin. Like duckpin, which uses pins shaped like tenpins, only smaller, candlepin gives you three shotput-sized balls per frame and is really, really hard. According to the record board downstairs, the best game bowled in candlepin in the state of Massachusetts is a 231... out of a possible 300. Wow. The only states represented in the record books were Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and the maritime provinces of Canada. Guess it's kinda regional, eh?)
The Gateway offers a door that locks, a TV that occasionally works, a reasonably comfortable bed, a functional bathroom... and free Wifi. This appears to be a trend with the sub-$100 hotels I frequent - the cheap hotel in Lexington (notable largely because it shares a parking lot with a Denny's, a major plus in my book) similarly features free Wifi. The walls are thin, which can really suck when school groups come here and spend the evening partying in the halls. And I'm not sure I'd stay here as a single woman. Their "continental breakfast" is inedible and usually gone by the time I wake up.
But then there's the price. I liked the Gateway when I could book it through Expedia for $79 a night. Now that I can book it through their own website at $69, I like it more. Discovering that my Harvard ID brings it down to $62 makes it even less painful to decide not to drive across the state at 2am.
I'm planning on asking tomorrow morning if they've got a frequent guest plan. You know, ten nights here and they give you a complementary steering wheel lock for your car...
Put me up in a five star hotel and I'm a happy man. But I'm beginning to develop a real fondness for the Cambridge Gateway Inn.
First, a disclaimer. Every time I mention the challenges of my Cambridge commute, my Boston friends step up with kind offers of places to stay in the area. While I'm deeply grateful for the hospitality, and while I love you all very much, the simple truth is that I rarely want to see any of you at the end of a Tuesday. Generally I've gotten up around 6am, been in meetings from 10 am to 7pm, had a business dinner with someone and, at 10pm, just want to drink a beer in my underwear and watch hockey, even if this means driving home first and Tivo'ing hockey.
Three years into this commute, I've compiled a comprehensive list of Boston area hotels that can be relied on to have a sub-$100 room with Wifi. There's three hotels on the list, and the Cambridge Gateway Inn, the cheapest of the three, is rapidly becoming the place I choose to hang my hat.
If you've ever driven into Boston on Route 2, you've seen the Gateway. It's between a bombed-out nightclub called Faces and a bowling alley, on the access road to the Alewife T Station. Oddly, the location is part of its charm. The key to a successful day in Cambridge, I believe, is ditching one's car as soon as possible. I generally do this at the Alewife T station, which means a morning that begins at the Gateway involves only a 500m drive... which can literally be accomplished with one's eyes closed. If you're truly broke, you can leave your car at the Gateway and walk to the T, saving $5 in parking.
In the evening, the Gateway's proximity to the bowling alley means that you can buy greasy bar food until 11pm and beer until midnight. (This is a big deal in Massachusetts, where convenience stores don't sell beer. Driving down Massachusetts Avenue into Cambridge to buy beer is definitive evidence that you've planned your day poorly...)
Oh yeah, you can bowl there, too. I brought my ball and shoes with me today and bowled three games after my last obligation today. It's a fairly remarkable joint - candlepin downstairs, tenpin upstairs, computer scoring throughout and bars on both floors. $4 Guiness in a plastic cup, the Bruins on the tube as I bowl my first frames in about two years and I'm a happy, happy man. (And badly out of practice. 99, 122, 104. My goal was to break 100 in at least one game, so I guess I can be proud of that...)
Not quite as much character as my home lanes, but there are some very nice wall murals made out of different shades of brown shag carpet. And there's no smoking, which is a huge improvement over the lanes in North Adams, which take months off my life every time I enter the building.
(By the way, discovering that candlepin appears to be purely a New England phenomenon makes me want to take up that sport as well. I grew up on duckpin... because it was cheaper than tenpin. Like duckpin, which uses pins shaped like tenpins, only smaller, candlepin gives you three shotput-sized balls per frame and is really, really hard. According to the record board downstairs, the best game bowled in candlepin in the state of Massachusetts is a 231... out of a possible 300. Wow. The only states represented in the record books were Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and the maritime provinces of Canada. Guess it's kinda regional, eh?)
The Gateway offers a door that locks, a TV that occasionally works, a reasonably comfortable bed, a functional bathroom... and free Wifi. This appears to be a trend with the sub-$100 hotels I frequent - the cheap hotel in Lexington (notable largely because it shares a parking lot with a Denny's, a major plus in my book) similarly features free Wifi. The walls are thin, which can really suck when school groups come here and spend the evening partying in the halls. And I'm not sure I'd stay here as a single woman. Their "continental breakfast" is inedible and usually gone by the time I wake up.
But then there's the price. I liked the Gateway when I could book it through Expedia for $79 a night. Now that I can book it through their own website at $69, I like it more. Discovering that my Harvard ID brings it down to $62 makes it even less painful to decide not to drive across the state at 2am.
I'm planning on asking tomorrow morning if they've got a frequent guest plan. You know, ten nights here and they give you a complementary steering wheel lock for your car...