[PaulHoule]

I'm writing mostly about my experience as a tourist where I can plan my itinerary around transit. You might live in a place where transit is unattractive (as I do) but if you are choosing a hotel you can find one that's convenient.

In one case I was attending a conference in NYC and then going to work in LA so I stayed in a hotel in Queens that was a few blocks from the subway that had a free shuttle bus to the airport. In LA I took the bus from LAX to the downtown and then took the Metro to the Hollywood & Vine era where I stayed at a really cool small hotel just two blocks away. The office was up in the hills and I would catch rides with coworkers to get there.

I'd contrast that to another ill-fated work trip where I went to San Diego and they rented a car for me and got me a reservation at a suburban place my boss really liked that wasn't good for the whole time because ComicCon was in town. Everything cheap was sold out so I wound up at the (great!) Kimpton with very expensive parking (I would have thought the hotel was a fine value if I wasn't paying to park.) Now I came back with a lot of cosplay photos so I can't complain but had I planned it myself I might have just walked out of the San Diego airport to the downtown (unusually this is easy in San Diego) and spared myself that moment of "... damn I don't know which side the gas tank is on in this car."