The Orr Family: Astoria 2014

Twenty four hours. That's all we had, but we decided to take the girls and skip town anyway. Tim has a crazier week than normal coming up and only had one day off with us so we wanted to make the best of it. MINI has a great incentive program and because of them it allowed us to take the girls to the Cannery Pier Hotel. It has been voted one of the best 25 hotels in the west by Sunset magazine so I knew we would really enjoy it. I have loved Astoria from afar ever since Kindergarten Cop came out over 20 years ago. My dream when I was younger was to live in Astoria and teach at the school from the movie. Astoria is nicknamed "Little San Francisco" for its hills and old Victorian era homes everywhere...and probably for the water and bridges I would imagine!

We headed out late Wed afternoon and got to the hotel to miss the wine and cheese hour...but they offered complimentary wine anyway...yes, please!

Here was my plan...we would let the girls jump on the beds and have sparkling cider in the bubble bath. Then we would let them enjoy one of the complimentary fresh baked cookies the hotel offers every night at 8...then we would watch American Idol and let them fall asleep and hopefully sleep in.

I wanted to create some fun memories...and for the most part all of this happened...until the sleep part.

Lacie loved it!

Around 9 Gracie was asking for us to turn off the TV so she could go to sleep. Charlotte, on the other hand, was in rare form. So we turned off the lights and I put her in bed with us. She was not having it. She cried. She babbled. She tossed and turned. This process repeated ALL. NIGHT. LONG.

I don't think the child slept more than a couple hours...and neither did we.

She was up for the day at 6:15.

So all morning we watched cartoons, ate breakfast in our room, and drank coffee while watching the ships go by. We did see lots of ducks and even a swimming sea lion.

One of the vintage cars the hotel has to chauffeur guests in the evenings

Late morning we headed into town to see the Astoria Column (which was way to slippery inside to bring the girls up all the steps). Then we drove by John Astor Elementary (from Kindergarten Cop) to fulfill a longtime dream of mine, and headed to lunch. We found the greatest restaurant (thank you, Yelp!) and had the best dining experience we have ever had with the girls.