Port Angeles Inn

I visited Port Angeles for a concert by a favorite classical musician. Now, Port Angeles might not be known as an arts or music center, but it should be. This small town, 2 1/2 hours by car from Seattle, has done an amazing thing, building and supporting a world-class concert hall, the Field Center (great acoustics, comfortable seating, beautiful locale). The Center is home to the annual "Music on the Strait" festival (as in Strait of Juan de Fuca), among many other ecletic events. The Festival's co-artistic directors, who grew up in PA and environs on their way to Julliard, are themselves world-class performers and able to bring talent to the festival hat one normally would see at Carnegie Hall & the like. I attended a performance by the internationally renowned pianist Jeremy Denk and the Takacs Quartet. Also, the composer of the new opera, Frida y Diego, which premiered at San Francisco Opera and was recently at the Metropolitan in NYC, was in residence and talked about her work. Takacs played one of her compositions - brilliant. A front row seat is stunningly inexpensive: $55. Port Angeles offers many other wonderful things to do (hiking, boating, fishing, great foot, jumping off point for ferries to the San Juan Islands etc.) but I wanted particularly to celebrate in this review a small town pulling together to create a cultural wonder.

For $380 a night, this hotel does the absolute bare minimum. The complimentary breakfast was a carb-heavy disappointment—white bread, zero fruit, and the most watered-down coffee imaginable. While the room was clean, it clearly hasn't been updated in 30 years. It feels less like hospitality and more like a shameless cash grab.

My room was clean, and the location is convenient to reaching the commercial district, as long as you are willing to climb several stories' worth of steps afterwards, to get back up to the higher part of town where the hotel is perched. The people at the reception desk were friendly and efficient. The facilities were clean, with just a few drops and splatters of blood on the staircase to the elevators, and even those could be avoided with the elevator. The free breakfast covered all the basic breakfast food needs at the lowest possible cost. The lack of A/C meant I had to keep the window open at night. I thought I might be bothered by the sound of other guests going through the corridor by my window, but my fellow guests didn't awaken me. It turned out, instead, that my sleep was interrupted by the ringing of the town bell every hour on the hour -- all the way through the night! After the 12th stroke of midnight I thought surely it would stop, but alas, I was awoken at 1 AM, 2 AM, etc. I suspect closing the window would solve this problem during the 10+ months of the year when it's not hot in Port Angeles. I was charged nearly $400 a night for my simple room, but I guess I deserved that for not booking further in advance during the peak season when lots of tourists need a place to stay before heading into Olympic National Park.