Sunday, October 16, 2011

Photo of the Week #24 – Reno at night


I traveled through Reno, NV in June 2006 on my way to Lake Tahoe. I can’t say that I was overly impressed with Reno. Perhaps my impression of Reno was influenced by the challenge of getting there. It was possibly one of the worst if not the worst flight scheduling experience in about 40 years of flying on a major U.S. airline. It also ended up being the most expensive domestic flight I’ve ever had in the U.S. and I booked the flight at least a month or more before the departure date.

Setting that aside, the photo was taken from my room in the Circus-Circus hotel. I paid in excess of $125.00 for a room that was no better then a $35.00 room at the average Motel 6. Adding to my displeasure, it took over two hours to check in because they had some kind of youth convention at the hotel at that time (which is also why the rates were elevated). I had to stand in line in a crowded, hot, extremely noisy lobby full of excited young people after getting off the flights from hell from the east coast. One would have thought that since there were numerous guests who were not with this youth convention group and who had advance reservations that they could have had one line for checking in non-convention guests.

Maybe I’m being unfair with being unimpressed by Reno. But, when I returned three days later to fly home, I experienced similar circumstances at a budget motel near the airport. I hope my two experiences were isolated instances and it was just a bad trip (at least the Reno part). Unfortunately, I’m not motivated to return to Reno based on this experience.

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