This is a quaint little hotel in a great part of the city. It's clean, the rooms are a reasonable size, and the pricing, while not cheap, is also not outrageous. That said, I don't believe that I would stay here again as the old-fashioned and dowdy vibe of the place just isn't my cup of tea.
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When we arrived, we were greeted warmly by the young lady working at the reception desk. She was very friendly as she had us fill out the registration card. Something I found odd was that she very thoroughly went over the hotel's policies regarding the breakfast/dining room area. She stressed that food from the dining room was to be consumed only in the dining room and could not be taken out of the dining room. We then had to specifically initial that part of the registration card in addition to signing the bottom line. Come the next morning, I figured out why they stress this policy, but more on that later. We took the elevator up to our room, 109, which overlooked Golden Gate Park. It was a warm day (75 degrees) so we were quite surprised to see that there wasn't an air conditioner in the room and apparently also no centralized AC. It wasn't a deal breaker, but did require that we leave the windows open, which meant either having cool air at night with tons of noise from the homeless guys camped out in the park, or having peace and quiet in a warm stuffy room. Certainly not ideal, but not horrible either. The room's decor was simple and old fashioned, like staying in the guest room at your grandmother's house. Not really my style, but not without its charms. We called the front desk to ask if we could have an extra luggage rack and they didn't know what that was. A few minutes later, someone came to our room and said "The desk said that you're missing something in your room?" We explained that we just wanted to know if we could have an extra luggage rack. You would have thought we'd asked the guy to repaint the room a different color from the look he gave us. After a long sigh, he said that he could get us one, but that he'd have to take it from another room and that meant another guest wouldn't have one. We didn't want to steal someone else's luggage rack so we said we were fine and just used a chair for the second suitcase.
The next morning, we headed down to breakfast around 7:30am (East Coast jetlag!) and were surprised to see that we were several decades younger than all of the other guests. The breakfast, which our fellow guests were very thoroughly enjoying, consisted of dried out Eggo Waffles and Pancakes in a chafing dish, hard-boiled eggs in a bowl of water, muffins, grocery store bagels, Cheerios cereal, and some fresh sliced fruit, along with coffee,tea and orange juice. Definitely not bad for a free breakfast, but also nothing to get excited about. I saw one of my fellow guests slip 4 bagels and at least 3 bananas into her purse when the staff member in charge of maintaining the buffet stepped out of the room for a moment. I guess when the majority of your guests are of the Matlock-watching set, you have to be explicit about the dining room policies to protect yourself from losing hundreds of dollars to pastry purloiners with over-sized pocketbooks each morning at breakfast. Although we stayed 5 nights, we only ate breakfast in the dining room twice as we honestly felt very out of place there and wanted to check out some of the nearby restaurants.
The hotel also serves afternoon tea in the dining room. I stopped by one afternoon while my partner was getting ready for our evening plans. Just as I was about to reach the table with the coffee and tea, an older gentleman with a walker and his wife slid up to the table first. I patiently stood behind them, waiting my turn to get a cup of coffee. Having seen me waiting, they took an extra long time to prepare their coffee. After a good five minutes, I finally said excuse me and asked if I could get step in to pour myself a cup of coffee; the man turned and looked me up and down and said that employees shouldn't be taking their coffee breaks in the guest dining room. I explained that I was not an employee and was also a guest. He moved a bit out of the way, but clearly did not approve of my being there, probably because I look younger than my 34 years. I quickly made my coffee, drank it down, and left with the old couple scowling at me.
The only other negative thing that happened during our stay was that on our 2nd day there, we returned to the room in the afternoon and found that it hadn't been made up. I called the front desk to ask about it; the same man who came up to our room the previous day answered the phone and sounded annoyed when I told him the room hadn't been serviced. He asked if I wanted the cleaning person to come right away; we didn't really need a whole cleaning, but just wanted some extra soap. The very sweet housekeeper came to the door a few minutes later and asked if we wanted the room cleaned. I let her know that we just needed some soap which she gave us. A few minutes later, the phone rang and the man from the front desk said "The maid told me she just serviced your room, is everything to your satisfaction now?" in a rather unpleasant tone I'm guessing he gets yelled at by a lot of grumpy guests, but he really needs to work on how he presents himself as he just oozes unhappiness.
We had a great vacation in San Francisco and found the location of the hotel to be really nice, close to the park and accessible to all of the places we wanted to go without being in a touristy neighborhood. The complimentary wifi was very spotty and only worked intermittently during our stay, but we weren't traveling on business so that wasn't a big deal for us. If you're looking for a quiet clean place to stay near USF or Golden Gate Park and enjoy homey old-fashioned type places, this might be a great hotel for you. As for me, I think I'll try somewhere else next time before coming here again.