My wife and I visited Iowa City, Iowa last week to attend a University of Iowa women’s basketball game, a rather bad loss to Minnesota.
Our hotel was Graduate by Hilton Iowa City, just off the ped mall, an extremely unique hotel: Hawkeye motifs throughout, “hand-written” sayings on the walls, bird wallpaper in the bathroom, Iowa-themed wallpaper in the halls, wall hanging showing classic wrestling moves. The room keys, however, sealed it.
Instead of your everyday, boring Hilton room key in either blue or mauve, we were handed “student identification cards” for what I assumed were fake people. In fact, very real Iowa graduates: George Nissen was a three-time NCAA gymnastic champion whom invented trampolining and eventually got its inclusion in the Olympics; Sheri Salata is an author and speaker, and former executive producer for Oprah. Wow, never knew.
Very cool hotel, interesting decor, great location but I still can’t recommend: thin walls and noisy street life made sleep somewhat difficult. At least I know where trampolining came from!
