We're wine fans and wanted a place to stay near the Russian River Valley -- on which we wanted to focus our attention this time around -- but close enough to Napa and Sonoma (45 minute drive to Napa) so that we could drive over to see the vineyard that one of our cousins had just purchased and/or to brave the throngs if we hated what we found in the North. (We didn't!) The pros of the facility outweighed the modest cons of the location and the price/value equation was excellent.

We're thrifty travelers and when we go someplace to stay for 5 days, we try to make the room our home away from home. So we immediately changed all of their fluorescent light bulbs in the room (one of our personal points of annoyance in chain hotels) ordered a refrigerator, feather pillows and table/chairs for our first-floor room-with-patio. Rhonert Park, the location, is 7 miles South of Santa Rosa so there's plenty of chain-store shopping at every turn; we had no problem stocking our refrigerator. The shower was excellent (another one of our travel benchmarks) but despite our vigilance with the curtain liner, we always managed to flood the room.

The gym facility was very poor and completely inadequate, which was a huge disappointment to us. Don't even bother unless you're happy with a couple of aerobic machines and a sad, rickety multi-use weight machine. A nice stacked washer/dryer was in the nearby ice machine room. (Quarters only.)

Parking was free and convenient; we found a back door near our room. Room had a sofa bed with coffee table and a decent desk. The facility is a square around a beautiful central pool courtyard so there's lots of walking to do if you don't scope-out optional entrances. The lobby is beautiful and the facility includes a large restaurant, which we did not use.

The hotel recommended Cotati's Italian Restaurant in downtown Cotati (a few miles to the South.) We loved it so much that we ended up having dinner there 3 nights during our stay. The hotel's directions were impossible (including "turn right onto unnamed road for 0 miles" but we found it easily after calling the restaurant.) Downtown Cotadi is quite a redneck hangout but the restaurant was sufficiently wonderful to keep us coming back, despite the motorcycle crowd that hung-out across the street at some dive. On another night, we had Japanese food at a nearby restaurant. If you like Japanese food, I'm sure this place was wonderful but I just went to be a sport.

We drove 101 each day to reach wine country and never drove more than 30 minutes to the farthest outreaches of our desired destinations. On most days, there was a severe traffic slowdown for a 5-mile stretch near Santa Rosa but we generally whizzed through by using the two-person-per-car commuter lane. We enjoyed our evenings by the pool and only occasionally was it occupied by screaming children, who seemed to sense the peaceful environment and frequently "shushed" themselves without parental intervention.

The mattress was much too firm and the addition of feather pillows didn't solve that basic problem. However, we were so exhausted and... tipsy ... after most days in wine country that we slept well despite the mattress.

A quirk: the air intake for the ventilation system was so close to the curtains in the room that we had to tie-back the curtain with one of our belts to keep it away from the intake so that the unit would operate efficiently.


Recommended: Yes