We are taking a short vacation to SF next month with our kids. We've booked our flights and are now working on a hotel reservation. As expected, the prices are ugly. Does anyone happen to have a good hotel recommendation that we wouldn't know about otherwise? We are okay with quirky, as long as it's clean quirky.
Any suggestions?
Suggestion: DO NOT stay in Oakland to save money.
I did it once and it was a bad idea for a thousand reasons.
I don't know if it would be any cheaper than staying in SanFran proper, but there are acceptable hotels in San Mateo and Foster City area nearby. It might be worth a look.
How far outside San Francisco are you willing to stay? I can recommend a very nice B&B in Santa Clara but that's probably too far out.
I have had great past experiences with priceline by naming my own price. I have used it for San Diego, Chicago, Huntington Beach. Pick the part of town you want. I always go the 4 star choice. Expect that you may get hit for $20 parking per night but I have been in places that charge over $200 per night for $69. Prices are even better on the weekends when the business travelers are gone. At 4 stars it is a Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton.
Priceline works great for rental cars also. I have had luck in the $15 - $25 per day rates. A co-worker got a Fusion for 3 days (weekend) for $9 per day. I have ended up with Hertz and Avis. The $9 for the coworker was Hertz.
I would not bother with a rental car in SF unless you want to go outside the city, so that tends to be an easy way to save 20 bucks a day.
Rent a car.
You are only a few hours away from Pebble Beach to the South and Yosemite to the East. Both are amazing drives in their own way. I took day trips to both last time I was out there.
Thanks folks! We want to stay in SF proper. We will have a car though, because we have to drive to Lake Tahoe later in the week for a business conference I'm attending.
jrw1621 wrote:I have had great past experiences with priceline by naming my own price. I have used it for San Diego, Chicago, Huntington Beach. Pick the part of town you want. I always go the 4 star choice. Expect that you may get hit for $20 parking per night but I have been in places that charge over $200 per night for $69. Prices are even better on the weekends when the business travelers are gone. At 4 stars it is a Hilton, Marriott, Sheraton.
Priceline works great for rental cars also. I have had luck in the $15 - $25 per day rates. A co-worker got a Fusion for 3 days (weekend) for $9 per day. I have ended up with Hertz and Avis. The $9 for the coworker was Hertz.
I've not tried Priceline. Good reviews, huh? Can you book there fairly far in advance? Or do the prices get better the closer you are to your stay date?
osterkraut wrote:When I "had" to go TDY there, we stayed here.
We also grabbed breakfast here and ooooh man. Everything was good.
Thanks OK!
My wife and I took our honeymoon there 5 years ago. My advice is to decide on what type of attractions you are looking at doing and stay accordingly. We stayed downtown and wished we had stayed closer to Union Square or Fishermans Wharf. Also IIRC the airport is a good 20 min drive from anything remotely touristy so I wouldn't stay in that area even though the rates tend to be a lot cheaper.
One good thing is that SF has a great mass transit system to get around so a car is not necessary unless you are really getting off the beaten path.
I have typically used priceline on short notice but I do not see why it would not work well in advance as well. Seems that hotels know it costs about $40 - $50 as a minimum to service a room (maid, water, heat, etc.) My San Diego and Chicago hotels were both Hyatts and each had over 1,000 rooms each. How much does the hotel make if the room sits empty? They will often take what they can get.
Once you arrive, the hotles do not treat you like a second class citizen, rather they treat you just the same.
The biggest draw backs are that there is no canceling.
Priceline only guarantees a standard room.
No guarantee of what the services will be like if you want something with a super pool.
A friend of mine is a hotel manager. Told me a great tip: You can really bargain for the hotel room, especially the later at night that it is. They can't sell tonights room tomorrow.
My wife and daughter and I were there last month. We stayed at Fishermans Wharf and it was quite pricey! Most of the hotels there seem to have similar rates ($150- $200). Also, the hotel parking down there was closer to $50 per night so we waited to get our rental until we were ready to leave town. Picking the car up in the city also meant that we had a limited number of miles we could use without being charged extra. Hope this helps...have fun it's a great place to visit!
Be sure to were a flower in your hair.
We have had great luck with Priceline for the last ten years, the closer you do it the better. I mostly get Hyatts and Mariott's and only paid over $75 twice. One was a Hyatt suite in Dearborn for $85 a night and one was the Marriot Marquies in Times Square for $135
mtn wrote:A friend of mine is a hotel manager. Told me a great tip: You can really bargain for the hotel room, especially the later at night that it is. They can't sell tonights room tomorrow.
Your friend is smarter than one fool I ran across. Stopped at a Motel 6 outside of St. Louis and asked for a room.
"$79/night."
"You've got to be kidding me, Motel 6 rooms cost $39 at most."
"Sorry sir, $79."
"It's 2 in the morning. You realize if I walk out that door you will not make a dime off of that room tonight."
"$79. Do you want the room?"
I left and found a $29 roach motel that worked just fine.
Fisherman's Wharf area. While you are there, drive down to Carmel. Sausolito is great too. Napa Valley is ok trip but be prepared to find that most of the good wine is not made at the fancy places. Sebastiani in Sonoma is a good stop though.
Thanks for the recommendations folks. I'm going to give Priceline a shot and see how that goes.
Uh, Fisherman's Wharf is a a tourist trap. Some interesting stuff to see, but really stay somewhere else and wander over there on your own and spend a few hours at the Chocolate Factory going in and out the door to get the samples.
Sausolito is very cool as is the wine country. If you're in SF long enough to do Alcatraz, while touristy as heck, is pretty damned impressive.
When I visited, I booked one of those hop-on-hop-off bus tours and it was damned handy to get around town on. Feet tired? Hop on and ride around a while. Wanna see something? Hop off and wander around. Leave the car for the longer trips out of town, heck the wine tour bus wasn't bad either.
Golden Gate Park is beautiful and the museums there are excellent, well worth the trip. You just missed the King Tut exhibit at the de Young, so I'm not sure what they're doing there right now, but still worth the trip to see it.
I've had pretty good luck with Hotwire.com and if you're a member of Costco, etc they sometimes have deals through them.
A wise old woman once scolded me for joking about diabetes, so I somberly suggest getting a sunday (not sharing) at the Ghiradelli store at the end of the wharf.
There are several classic sports car stores on & around Van Ness Street.
dyintorace wrote:We are taking a short vacation to SF next month with our kids. We've booked our flights and are now working on a hotel reservation. As expected, the prices are ugly. Does anyone happen to have a good hotel recommendation that we wouldn't know about otherwise? We are okay with quirky, as long as it's clean quirky.
Any suggestions?
I've rented several times from there and its a good gig.
I stayed here (http://www.kimptonhotels.com/hotels/factsheets/serrano-hotel-san-francisco/index.aspx) several years ago, and it was very nice. I'm not sure it's particularly kid-friendly, though it was great for a nice weekend away with my wife as part of a business trip.
If you insist on having a rental car in SF, pick it up at the last possible moment. So long as you're in the city, it's more of a liability than an asset.
