I had to go to Billings, Montana to meet with a new customer. I was excited to go because I had never been to Montana and couldn’t wait to see it. The only problem was that in reviewing the schedule, I realized that I probably would not have any opportunity to see the area. That was too bad, but work is work and that’s the only reason I was there to begin with. You can probably imagine my surprise when I found out that two days of meetings was only going to be one as our new customer had to leave town. My company said I could just stay and fly home as scheduled, but I’d need to find my own hotel if I did so. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, so I asked for a few minutes to look into it.
As it turns out, a few minutes was all I needed. I used HotelTonight and saw a wide range of choices for Billings hotels. I took a look at them, picked out the one that seemed to fit my needs the best and within a couple of minutes was booked and ready to go. I called the rental car company to extend my contract by a day and I headed to my new Billings hotel room. When I got there, I asked the staff where I should go to explore the area as a local would. They gave me some really good insight, so now that I had a plan and a lot of energy, I headed down the road.
I wanted to see the wildlife of Montana, but one day wasn’t going to be enough time to do that and still get to experience all of the other parts of town. Fortunately, there’s a very nice zoo in the city, so I walked through that and saw some amazing wildlife. I may as well have been off in the wilderness of Big Sky Country, as it was thrilling. From there, I spent some time walking around downtown and taking a look at some of the shops that were nearby. This was a place that had a true sense of itself, and it made no bones about it. I liked that immediately.
Talk about frontier history. North Elevation is a collection of stunningly beautiful homes, and it seems almost as if all of them were built more than 100 years ago. The lots for these homes were huge, the people who were out and about were extremely friendly and the atmosphere overall was something to behold. I stopped in for a quick cup of coffee. That was exactly what I needed, as it was delicious and gave me a nice boost of energy. It was time to move onto the next phase of my exploration of this great city.
Once again, I came to a part of town that had me wondering if I’d be seeing people on horseback coming through and tying them up before doing some trading. The Billings Townsite Historic District is home to the Billings Depot and several other buildings that will have you convinced that you’re traveling back in time. I also realized that it was lunchtime and that I was extremely hungry. Billings, as it turns out, is a very good place in which to find yourself extremely hungry. I asked around and was told to try a locally owned place that served serious lunches. They were right – this was serious, as in seriously filling. I was more than set for the afternoon.
At lunch, a nice lady told me I should go and visit Old Town. I was actually confused, as I had just seen a lot of old and historic places. Turns out that she was right. I strolled around Old Town and really thought that I had a good idea of what it was like to live in the 19th Century. There was so much to see and do that I think I managed to burn off at least part of my enormous lunch. It was really a neat thing to see so much history in one place.
Cameron Park was a bit of a trek back to modern times, so to speak. It was also a beautiful neighborhood. Locals were running around by this time of day, the evening, getting their last-minute errands done and rushing home to be with their families. I was enjoying all of this when I realized that it was time for some dinner. I asked around once again, and time and time again I heard that I should try the pizza here. It seemed like fun, so that’s what I did. If you could call something a “Montana pizza,” this would be it – enormous and full of cheese and tasty toppings. Wow, was I full.
As I laid down in my very comfortable hotel room, I looked back on what was a very interesting day. I had now seen a bit of Montana and tasted a lot of Montana. I had also found a nice Billings hotel room because of HotelTonight. I reminded myself to let others know about HotelTonight if they are ever looking for a place to stay without much time to find one.
