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A friend had a baby, so we drove to Portland, OR over the weekend to visit and spent one quick night there. I still hadn’t used my FHR benefit this year, and when I was booking the hotel, I saw that this IHG property, Kimpton RiverPlace Hotel, had pretty good reviews, so I figured I’d give it a try.

On Friday, we waited for our kid to get out of school, picked them up, and then sat in traffic the whole way. By the time we got to Portland, it was already past 9 p.m. The hotel is right by the Willamette River. You need a key card to get in. When we got to the entrance, there was no one there, and I immediately worried this would be another dud. Luckily, after waiting at the door for two minutes, someone from bell service came to let us in.

The young woman at the Front Desk was clearly very conscientious. I asked about an upgrade, but she couldn’t quite handle it herself, so she brought over another employee named Lily to help. Lily looked much more experienced, and her attitude was surprisingly great. She asked whether it would be okay if there were no more river-view rooms, and I said that was fine—I didn’t need a view, just a quiet room. Lily helped us pick a top-floor corner suite. She also said she was going to go help set it up, so if we walked in and found her inside, not to be surprised.

You can tell the hotel has some age to it. The suite wasn’t large, and my kid complained that it was too small, but I actually thought it was pretty nice. The decor felt kind of like an old-money American style, maybe? That probably made it feel a little more crowded visually.

My kid slept on the sofa bed in the living room outside. My partner is already very practiced at setting up sofa beds. The welcome gift Lily arranged was a bottle of 2019 red wine. We don’t drink, so we know absolutely nothing about it.

I slept soundly through the night. It really was very quiet. I’m pretty sensitive to noise, so it’s been a long time since I stayed in a hotel that felt genuinely quiet to me. Maybe it was because we were in a suite—in the bedroom with the door closed, it felt even quieter. In the morning, though, you could still hear the neighbors from the living room.

Breakfast was at the seafood restaurant downstairs. FHR includes a $60 breakfast credit, and the additional $100 experience credit could be used toward valet parking ($55) or at the restaurant.

The restaurant faces the river directly, along with the riverside park and bridge, so the view is really nice.

There were lots of people exercising in the riverside park that morning, so I went out enthusiastically and took a few photos. It was actually my first time visiting Portland in the spring.

Since we were only staying one quick night and had nowhere else to use the $100 credit, we hurried to order some pricier breakfast items. We got the crab omelet—the eggs themselves were pretty average, but there was a decent amount of crab, and the pieces were all large. We also got the crab Benedict, which was very good. We also liked the hash browns quite a bit.

We also ordered oysters—delicious! But the value was terrible. In the elevator area, I saw that they have an oyster happy hour every Wednesday, with oysters for $1 each. With that plus valet parking, we basically used up almost all of the breakfast and experience credits.

There always seemed to be only one person handling Bell Service, and since we only had one suitcase anyway, we just managed the luggage ourselves. Valet parking also seemed to be handled one car at a time, though fortunately there weren’t many guests that day.

Both my partner and I were pretty happy with this hotel. My kid still kept complaining that the room was too small, lol. The rate on our check-in date also wasn’t high, so personally I think it’s a pretty good property for burning an FHR stay.

Here are some random photos I took. The last time I came to Portland was during the pandemic, when we only stopped briefly on a road trip. This was my fourth visit overall.

These looked kind of like older apartment buildings in China. I wonder if Seattle has anything like this.

After visiting the baby, we went to Koku Ramen for lunch. The chashu pieces were especially large, and the egg was pretty good too. The noodles were just okay.

Then it was time to head home! It really was a very short trip—most of the time was spent on the road.

The cherry blossoms along the road were beautiful, but unfortunately I didn’t photograph them very well.

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