Hotel Lucia, according to its literature, wants to provide a relaxing yet hip hotel experience. And indeed, visiting Portland from Los Angeles, there were many elements of the place that reminded me of home. That's not a good thing.

The place does indeed have a lot of nice amenities: Aveda products, lush bedding, well designed bathrooms. But where Hotel Lucia indeed attempts to make the visitor comfortable, they fall short in the most frustrating, obvious ways.

For instance, while they'd sunk a good bit of money into the comfy pillow-top mattress pad, they hadn't thought to get a fitted sheet that fit the bed. What good is an extra-comfortable mattress when a person wakes up with the sheet and felt pad balled up beneath them? The alarm clock (very nice) had a docking station for my iPod, yet the wireless was fourteen dollars a day. Even the Portland Airport comes with a free connection.

The lobby is nice, but loud and seems to function not only as a gathering place, but also has a hallway from one major area to another. The room price is not cheap and I was struck (dumbfounded, really) by how small they were. Between the end of the bed and the dresser are a scant couple of feet. The only chair in the room is a stiff high-backed desk chair, which isn't very relaxing (nor hip) to watch the plethora of television channels.

The hotel staff was quick to respond to any request. It took minutes for some hypo-allergenic pillows to be sent up to the room. But the pillows were no bigger than the size of my head whereas my companion got huge pillows to lie back on. So, all in all, the Hotel Lucia is a lot like people from LA: quick to announce its hipness, confident that it's worth the expensive price, but when you get right down to it, there's not much brains to balance out the showiness.

Sadly, I won't be back.