Jupiter Hotel, Portland, Oregon

Don't let the glowing press about The Jupiter Hotel fool you for an instant. It is NOT a place I would ever recommend that anyone stay. We ended up here because it's where the wedding couple booked their block of rooms. I have also seen it featured in several travel and food magazines recently, where it has gotten glowing reviews. It has a website that makes it look very swank and appealing. It even had decent buzz from people familiar Portland. What I would like to know is, what were all those people who gave the place good reviews smoking, and where can I get some?

The "hotel" is actually a motel of the old motorlodge variety. In other words, room access is outdoors up rickety stairways covered in molding, ripped and (as of Saturday morning) vomit stained, indoor/outdoor carpet. The rooms are small, and the "hippest" thing about them is that they are furnished with the cheapest things on offer at IKEA. The carpet in our room was brown, and also of the indoor/outdoor variety. The tile in the bathroom was surface clean, but the grout has not been scrubbed in at least a year. There was no art on the walls at all; the room was a uniform dorm room-style white textured paint. There were four hangers in our room and the drawers of the small bureau had dead bugs in them. There were cobwebs in every corner of the room.

All that might have been liveable if only the service was decent. Alas, not so. The place is apparently run by people who have absolutely no desire to indulge in customer service.