Mid October, 3 days each San Fran, Carmel, help us plan!
 

What we know..
3 days in San Fran, arrival on Saturday mid day, mid October
3 nights at The Stanford Court Renaissance Hotel are booked.
No plans yet for Saturday afternoon.
No plans for Sunday or Monday.
Tuesday - pick up rental car & visit Golden Gate Park on our last day in San Fran.

We do want to have some time for shopping at some unique boutiqes or stores. Interested in seeing cool architecture. We are runners, so we want to take some nice runs through San Fran. We would like to do a night out in North Beach. Eat some great Italian food in that area. Interested in eating good seafood, I want to go where the locals do. We want to avoid the tourist traps.
3 nights in Carmel/Monterey or Carmel Valley. No hotel, B&B or inn selected. We are looking for a really romantic location. A place where we can relax and unwind. Eat good food. See the sites. We will have a rental car the last day in San Fran and for the remainder of our trip. I would welcome suggestions to fill our time in San Fran, as well as hotel suggestions for the Carmel area.
Flight out of San Jose on the 7th day.
Thanks,
Mark

I highly recommend doing at least [the more, the better]free tours given by SF Library. We've done quite a few, and several lend themselves to architecture: City Scapes, Victorian SF, Ruth Miller Ramble, Rising Steel to name just a few. Lots of others too:

http://www.sfcityguides.org/index.html

The tours are so interesting and the guides love what they do and it shows! While the tours are free, a small donation is welcomed [we usually do $5 per person on each tours, we often do several tours during our visits]. We think this is one of the best bargains in SF.

I also recommend Seven Gables Inn in Monterey and Passionfish in Pacific Grove for dinner.

Correction, Seven Gables is really in Pacific Grove.
Some pics of Pacific Grove.

https://picasaweb.google.com/DebitNM/PacificGroveCA2008

If the Seven Gables doesn't work out, another romantic hotel is the Monterey Plaza Hotel in Cannery Row, especially if you get a bay view room.

Golden Gate Park is a natural for running, as would the waterfront along the Presidio.

I would not save Golden Gate Park for going on your way out. You have the Academy of Sciences, the de Young Museum, the Japanese Tea Garden among the obvious destinations that will take more than a drive through.

For running there is a path along the coast from Pacific Grove to Monterey. You'll probably want to visit the Monterey Aquarium and the Carmel Mission. Point Lobos Natural Preserve, just south of Carmel is a good place to sea otters in the wild--bring binoculars.

We live in Pacific Grove. The bulk of the coastline for the Monterey Peninsula is in Pacific Grove.

Passionfish is outstanding. Fandango is also well known and good. Peppers is a good local place, casual and noisy, for Mexican food. All of these are in Pacific Grove.

Seven Gables Inn is great for location, right on the Monterey Bay. The location is so scenic it was used in a VISA TV spot a few years ago. The Green Gable Inn is also right on the Bay. Both are in PG. Also on the bay is the Martine Inn...filled with antiques.

You can check out most of these places on www.pacificgrove.org.

For San Francisco: One of the hottest restaurants in town at present is the SLANTED DOOR. It is in the Ferry Building. Must book reservation in advance. The Ferry Building is also worth a visit for the shops and the Saturday morning farmer's market. The tower is hard to miss.

Another great restaurant is QUINCE. it is near the financial district and reservation also needed. Neither place is cheap, but worth the price.

I would stay clear of the restaurants in North Beach if you want to avoid Tourist traps. Not to say you shouldn't go as it is an interesting place to walk around - Lunch at Molinari's deli is something to do. One of Our favorite Italian Restaurants is the Richmond District Mescolanza 2221 Clement. Small intimate, great northern Italian food. But you would need a car or take the bus or cab. There is a Victorian House walking tour that meets at Union Square that is quite good (check them out on line for prices, etc) Also Chinatown walking tour is very informative. Alcatraz is a MUST for anyone coming to SF. I take all our out of town guests there. A really good French Restaurant is FRINGALE on 4th(?) in SF another small and intimate restaurant. If you have a car even for a day, Muir Woods is great to walk and see all the wonderful redwoods and of course drive to Napa or Sonoma for the day. I agree on Seven Gables In Pacific Grove.

Another good French restaurant is l'Ardoise, in the Castro.

This is all great information. Thanks to all of you so far. Keep it coming, I will let you know once we start settling in on things!

Here is a report I did awhile back, has some pics and food recs:
http://www.fodors.com/community/unit...-francisco.cfm

We took the reverse trip a month ago. We started in Carmel and then end up at Stanford Court. We stayed at the Hyatt Highlands Inn in Carmel. It was the most stunning view I have ever seen. Very close to Point Lobos park. It is actually a timeshare resort. Can't say that I would want to attend a 90 minute sales presentation while on vacation, but when I googled the property now, I saw they have a trial vacation $399 for two nights with $100 resort credit.(The rooms retail for $500 a night.) We used Hyatt points.

We liked Stanford Court but it wasn't my favorite hotel, mostly because it wasn't the Highland Inn. I get spoiled quickly. Be sure to purchase Muni passes for the trolley. You will ride it alot. We rarely had to wait for a trolley and never had a problem with the trolley's being full. It is a quick ride downhill to the Ferry Building for breakfast and buying provisions for picnics. The trolley rides are $6 a piece so it really pays to have a pass. Believe me. You do not want to walk uphill to the hotel.

The hotel is also close to China town. Walk down California a couple of blocks and turn left when you see the lanterns.

For your three days in San Francisco, you should get the three day muni pass ($21), called the "Visitor's Passport", as this allows you to ride on almost all the modes of public transportation in San Francisco, including the cable cars. A single ticket on the cable car is $6, so the Pass pays for itself with just one cable car ride.

Here's a list of the places where you can purchase the Passport:

http://www.sfmta.com/cms/asystem/farevendpassport.php

Usually, the best place to purchase the pass is at the kiosk on the corner of Powell and Market, which places you near the cable car terminals.

While you're purchasing your Passport, buy the transportation map as well. It's $3. This will list all the bus, tram, cable car routes.

The "trolley" that palm was referring to is actually the cable car; we have trolley buses in SF, we also have streetcars that out of towners often call trolleys. The cable car is useful if you are staying on Nob Hill, otherwise most people just ride it to and from Fisherman's Wharf and because of its iconic nature,

Hi, SAB!

The OP is staying on Nob Hill at the Stanford Court. The cable car (is it called the California Line? I can never remember, just get on the cable car and ride... :) ) will take them up that hill and drop them off right at the corner, half a block or less from their hotel. Otherwise, they have to chug-a-lug themselves up that hill every time they come back.

Easy, I think that's what SAB meant when s/he said it was "useful for getting to Nob Hill", which is where the Stanford Court is.

Be sure to take one of your days in Carmel to drive down the coast at least as far as Big Sur - you can stop at Point Lobos, Pfeiffer Beach, Pfeifer-Burns park, etc. Have lunch on the deck at Nepenthe (they stop serving lunch at 4:30, and start serving dinner, a different menu, at 5:00). Fabulous way to spen a nice weather day.

Thanks so much for all the information from everyone. If you think of anything else, or anyone else wants to add any info, THANKS1

We've also stayed at the Hyatt Highlands Inn, and we too got spoiled. =) But I will say - definitely get drinks at the Pacific Edge (the attached restaurant) whether you stay overnight or not. The view is breathtaking and the drinks are incredible, and I don't usually drink hard alcohol. I would NOT, however, eat at the restaurant unless you have money to burn. Based on the appetizers we got with our drinks, the food is fine, but not worth a $250 meal when what you're really paying for is the view, which you can see with just drinks.

Another hotel we loved and wished we could have stayed at was Mission Ranch. Another spectacular view if you care to get a meal or drinks on the patio (great food at a more reasonable price than Pacific's Edge) - there's a meadow that extends from the patio to the sea complete with a grazing herd of sheep. The hotel itself seemed charming - separate bungalows scattered throughout the property. Can't say for sure how great it is since we stayed at the Highlands, but for our next trip that's where we plan to go.