We are cashing in two of our six free hotel nights. Thanks McMenamins Passport! (McMenamins Passport replies: Thank you for spending all that money at McMenamins while completing your passport.)
We’re staying at Anderson School, which is the newest hotel in the chain. I’m glad to use our free nights at this hotel, as it’s more expensive than some of the others.
Why is is more expensive than some of the hotels? A bathroom! In the room! While I don’t mind at all the shared bathroom situation at many of the hotels (and am happy to trade off the bathroom for a lower-cost room) it was nice to have our very own bathroom. There was also a TV. Very un-McMenamins-like!
It did have the same awesome artwork throughout. We stayed in a room named after a local Bothell resident who became an astronomer. 
I didn’t take pictures of the soaking pool, but it was an interesting experience. (You can see a picture in this blog post, or by googling) When we walked into the pool area, it seemed to be very cold and the lifeguards were bundled up in sweats and blankets. We got in the water and kept as much of our bodies as possible in the warmth. It was night, so it took a while, but eventually I wondered if the skylights not skylights but openings in the roof. They were indeed openings. And the huge windows on one wall were not windows, but also openings. It’s an indoor/outdoor pool. Apparently, it was built that way, when Anderson School was a school. McMenamins kept it the same way.
“What happens when it rains?” I asked the lifeguard.
“It rains through the skylight,” was his nonplussed answer.
“What happens when it snows?”
“It snows through the skylight,” he said with a shrug.
Because of the unique indoor/outdoor pool experience, at times the pool is closed due to fog.
On Saturday we ate at the Tavern on the Square (actually we also ate there on Friday night, [McMenamins says: Thanks for spending money onsite while staying in the room for free] but these pictures came from Saturday morning)
This set of stained glass windows is David Schlicker’s interpretation of Mike McMenamin’s most favorite Grateful Dead song “Scarlet Begonias”
The lyrics to the verse are carved around the bar.
