SXSW Part 2 - Accommodations

Choosing a hotel online is always an adventure. To paraphrase the line from Forrest Gump, "You never know what you're gonna get." After having dumped over $1,000 on the festival registration and airfare, I was looking to skimp on the hotel accommodations. So I found a rate of $60 or so per night at the Travelodge. After all is said and done, it wasn't really that bad. It was clean enough, but certainly far from luxury. It's a beaten up motel that is flanked by the Highland Mall just across the way. As with many lower-end establishments, the drainage in the shower took a while to go into effect, but other than that, not too many issues. Except, ah yes, there was a leak seemingly coming from behind the toilet. The folks at travelodge quickly got the water cleaned up from the bathroom floor, but when I returned that evening, I discovered that water had seeped underneath the carpet in the bedroom section of the room. As the great Yogi Berra once said, "It's like deja vu all over again." Having just dropped a bucketload of money repairing water damage in my own bedroom, this was not a welcome discovery. But, at that point, I only had a couple days left there, so I simply advised the concierge to have the issue addressed quickly. Not sure if they did anything, but hopefully they won't have mushrooms growing through the carpet like I did at home. All in all, seeing as though I spent hardly any time in the room, it was passable. I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it though.