The class I took this week was a residential class where we stayed at a hotel for the three days. This week we were at the Willows Lodge in Woodinville, Washington (about 15-20 minutes north of Microsoft campus). I've been to the restaurants at Willows Lodge before (the excellent Barking Frog and the legendary Herb Farm), but I've never stayed at the hotel before.

It was great.

The rooms are swish and lovely; each has a fireplace, huge tub, high thread count sheets, a computer w/ flat panel, and super nice decor. It's like the Salish Lodge (where we held Strategy Conference) but more modern and hip -- a luxury NW resort.

I did, however, find some minor annoyances. While the lighting was very nice, there were switches all over the room and no master way to turn them off, so I had to run around the room turning off a dozen lights before I could leave. (I love the stick-the-card-in-the-switch thing that many hotels in other countries use to toggle room power). Also, the shower had a pretty cool faucet where you set the desired temperature using up and down buttons, watching the LCD display and then hit the on/off switch. While this satisfied my inner geek, it was just inconvenient. I don't need to know this level of precision (102 or 103 degrees?) nor do I want to press and hold anything. (There's probably a long blog post coming about the usability of water faucets.)

Still, these things were trivial and didn't diminish the experience much. If you're visiting the Seattle area and need to be near Microsoft or want to be in our local wine country (Woodinville has a bunch of good wineries), I highly recommend Willows Lodge.