Travelzoo popped a message into my inbox last week announcing that Alaska Airlines has a fantastic new fare on its San Jose-Portland route.  I checked it out, and sure enough the fare was the lowest I've seen in a long time, so I went ahead and booked my flight to the WMA conference (October 17-20).

I worked my way through college as a travel agent (back in the day when everyone had to go through a travel agent to get anywhere beyond their own neighborhood), and I still love to build an itinerary, so I started checking into some details for this Portland trip.

Portland has a great public transportation system.  The light rail service's Red Line makes it very simple to travel between the Portland airport and the conference hotel.  The trip takes just under 30 minutes, and the ticket price is only $2.30 one way.

The Doubletree Hotel is located 1/2  a block from the Lloyd Center/NE 11th Avenue station (8 stations from the airport).   Check out the TriMet YouTube video to see how simple it is.

Trimet also has links to over 30 apps for you smartphone users.  Oh, and by the way, the hotel is situated on the edge of the Free Zone, so travel into and around downtown on light rail and streetcar won't cost us a dime.  That's cool!

(One more thing: if you will be on a tight schedule, you might want to check out the average TSA security wait times at the Portland airport. )

See ya in Portland!

Lydia Johnson