San Francisco hotels
 

As a first time visitor to San Francisco I want to stay in a hotel close to Union Square. What about Hotel Nikko on Mason St , the Grand Hyatt on Stockton , or the Hilton San Francisco on O"farell St. ? There is also a small hotel The Maxwell, how is it ?

Check previous psts about staying in SF. They were extremely helpful to me!

You can get great deals on Priceline for 4-star hotels near Union Square. Park Hyatt and Grand Hyatt for $50-$55/night. Go to www.biddingfortravel.com and scroll down to SF hotels to see successful bids. Moderators at that site will help you construct your bid. Well worth your time to learn the PL ropes.

Betsy, will you give the constant touting of Priceline and Biddingfortravel a rest? It's not the answer to everything and it's not for everyone. I'm beginning to think you're getting paid by one or both of these websites.

we stayed at the maxwell a year ago. the location is terrific, a half block from union square. i was disappointed in how the lobby looked but our room was just fine, with an in room safe, nice bath, terry cloth robes, king size bed, etc. if you can get a room at a great rate, i'd do it. otherwise, i have heard that the nikko is wonderful.

Nestor-<BR>We stayed at the Sir Francis Drake over the 4th of July and really enjoyed it. Even though the rooms were a bit small, we had a great rate through quikbook. Everyone at the hotel is very friendly and the location was very convenient. There was a cable car stop right in front of the hotel and we were in walking distance of Chinatown and North Beach.

Nestor,<BR><BR>Although I can't comment on the hotels you've mentioned, I thought I might put in a good word for the Hotel Monaco near Union Square. Hotel Monaco is a wonderful "boutique" hotel about three blocks from the square. <BR><BR>The rooms are French-influenced and quite beautifully appointed. The hotel itself is full-service and features a good restaurant (the Grand Cafe) a really neat old bar (the Corner Bar) and complimentary wine and cheese each afternoon in the lobby.<BR><BR>We have stayed at the Hotel Monaco three times and haev always been pleased with both the rooms and the service. We have also found the location to be quite convenient for getting around the city.<BR><BR>Hope this helps,<BR><BR>Davidcs

SF Hilton is huge---mostly a business convention type place. Location is OK if you're careful to walk toward Union Square and not the other way. The Prescott is a very nice hotel on Post between Mason and Taylor so near Union Square but not as noisy. Their restaurant is a Wolfgang Puck and you will get preferred reservations.

The Hilton (though most people don't care for it's atmosphere) and the luxury Westin St Francis, have been having some low rates recently on the discount sites. I have seen the St. Francis as low as $119 plus parking. <BR><BR>Don't forget with the discount bookings, you usually can't cancel or change your plans. <BR><BR>boulevards.com has a good city guide to San Francisco and their hotel booking link sometimes comes up with good rates.

I stayed at the Westin St. Francis this past May for $125 a night - it looks out over Union Square so the location couldn't be more perfect, and the hotel has interesting historical significance. I got this rate through Hotwire. I also recommend the Hotel Argent, which is just a few blocks south of Union Square in SoMa near the terrific Museum of Modern Art.

As a first time visitor to SF, you may not want to stay in Union Square due to the decrepit conditions of the area. Unfortunately, much of SF has been on the decline.<BR><BR>Living and working in San Francisco, I have seen the streets deteriorate at an alarming rate. <BR><BR>Everyone who lives and works in this city knows the situation on our streets is impossible to ignore. We?re all sick of stepping over garbage and human waste, averting our eyes to people shooting-up on doorsteps and the heart-wrenching stories of single mothers who can?t find a place to sleep while shelter beds go empty every night<BR><BR>City leaders allowing the homeless problem to worsen. Those with the power to change things aren?t willing to work together to do something.<BR><BR>

Pat, absolutely have never made a dime from any recommendation I've made on this board. I'm just a very satisfied PL user. The bargains in the SF hotels are incredible for those who want to take the time to learn to bid.<BR><BR>Please skip my posts if you're not interested.

Nestor,<BR><BR>Pay no attention to xxx. He/she bashes San Francisco on nearly all posts and yet never has the guts to post under a real name; xxx is a coward.<BR><BR>San Fran is a great town and you will have a blast!<BR><BR>Tom

Nestor,<BR><BR>I would have to agree with xxx about the sad state of San Francisco. I too found it to be quite dirty. You may want to reconsider spending your vacation there.

Sisters were in SF last week during the hideous hot spell in the central valley. They took Bart in from east bay, spent the day and came back after 10:00 pm. Had a blast. Saw all the regular tourist spots including coit, china town, Lombard Street, Fisherman's Warf. Took cable car and other mass transit. Had 6 kids with them and they all had a great time! GO!

We love The Prescott Hotel whch is on Post Street just two short blocks from Union Square. It's a lovely, elegant boutique hotel with charming, well appointed rooms, excellent service, a great cozy bar and one of the best SF restaurants, Postrio. We usually stay on the Club floor. We've stayed her at least a dozen times and higly recommend it.

You walk down Market Street and step over<BR>comatose bodies, debris and human waste. It's just not a pleasant experience<BR>I used to make regular overnight visits to San Francisco for dinner and<BR>theater, but now I usually go elsewhere. <BR><BR>Leave politics out of it. Leave all the issues of needy folks out of it. We're talking about hygiene here. It's where people walk and take their kids. It's<BR>dirty and nasty and not healthy. <BR><BR>City officials say they've done their best, they are spending more than $200<BR>million this year on the homeless, about the same as San Francisco spends annually on its Fire Department. Still, they admit they haven't put a dent in the<BR>problem of visible homelessness. There are about as many people living on the city's streets today as there were a decade ago. San Francisco's total estimated homeless population 12,500.<BR><BR>Some of the things I have <BR>observed in Union Square, the downtown area of Market Street and its side streets, in the Mission, the Castro, the Haight and on Potrero Hill include:<BR><BR>Public urination and defecation, <BR>blatant drug dealing and use, with vendors calling out their substances - <BR>marijuana, crack cocaine, heroin - on street corners, and addicts sticking needles into their veins on the sidewalks, drunks sprawled across sidewalks, sometimes in their own vomit; delusional sidewalk ranting by mentally ill men and women and aggressive panhandling.<BR><BR>First-time visitor from Huddersfield, England said she and a friend were frightened and saddened when they left one day and saw numerous homeless people waking up on the sidewalk. <BR>"It was awful, really," she said. <BR>"It's vomit and feces, every day," said a street sweeper for the Union Square Busines Improvement District, wearing plastic gloves as he cleaned the sidewalk in front of the old Emporium<BR>building on Market Street. <BR>"I was disturbed by it for a week," said Embarcadero resident, recalling the day she saw a man defecating in the street near Fisherman's Wharf. <BR>

Well, I was in SF for a day this past March, and didn't notice 1. an overly large number of homeless people, 2. anyone relieving themselves on city streets, 3. any more dirt or grime than any other major city anywhere in the US, 4. unhealthful conditions.<BR><BR>I walked all along Market Street, then up to Chinatown, and all the way up to Fisherman's Wharf, then back again. (and, yes, walked - no trolley, no taxi, my own two feet) Had a thoroughly enjoyable time and felt completely safe. (was alone) Even went down Broadway (I think?) where there were adult bookstores and strip clubs, and still felt safe and did not notice any drug dealers or homeless people.<BR><BR>Either the homeless and drug dealers were on vacation that day or some of these posts are an exageration. SF is a big city, and it has the dirt and grime of any large city. But its charm far outweighs any of that. Go and enjoy!<BR>

Michele,<BR><BR>Actually SF is not a big city. It's population is about 750,000. <BR><BR>To say that you saw no more homeless people, trash, or grime that in other cities of similar size means that you must be blind. I am in SF on a regular basis and constantly have to watch where I put me feet so that I do not trip over homeless people in the street, their belongings, or worse yet, step in their waste. The odor on many of SF's streets and sidewalks can be unbearable at times. It is really too bad that SF has become so bad.

We were in San Francisco for a week last fall. And found it no worse than any large metropolitan city.<BR><BR>Stayed in Union Square and roamed all around. Saw nobody relieving themselves in public, minor panhandling and had no interference with our enjoyment of the City.<BR><BR>Sure, we saw bums. It's a problem. But there's no easy solution. Just don't let it get in the way of your enjoyment of a very special place.

Luvthe, Michele, Tom,<BR><BR>Please stop being untruthful about SF and trying to mislead tourists. You know as well as I do that SF is, and has been in a steep state of decline in terms of trash in the streets, the homeless, agressive panhandlers, drug dealing, and prostitutes. We should not be misrepresenting SF just to lure tourists into coming here and then ending up disappointed.

<BR><BR><BR>This is sums up SF's problems in today's newspaper.<BR><BR> Go to New York for an "I Love NY" campaign -- but here in San Francisco, the tourist czars have ditched<BR>the sweet hype for something more gritty: a billboard campaign calling for the city's politicians to get off their duffs and clean up the streets.<BR>Almost overnight, 33 giant ads have sprung up all over town, with such nontourist phrases as "I don't<BR>want to sweep people off my doorstep," "I want the Board of Supervisors to stop playing politics and actually do something about the streets" and "I want<BR>to know why homelessness is still a problem after we spent $200 million last year?" <BR>As for why a group that promotes tourism is hanging out the city's dirty laundry, Hotel Council President John Hutar says his group is fed up. "We're the ones who have to go out and sell the city,<BR>and it's really becoming an issue with our customers," Hutar says. <BR>Hutar, who is also the general manager of the Hotel Nikko, said the problem hit a peak during a recent council sales trip to Paris. "There you are trying to sell the city to booking agencies, and all you hear is 'Your city is dirty' or<BR>'You have homeless -- they're aggressive and they scare people.' " <BR>Hutar said he's also worried about keeping national conventions coming to the city, saying the Association of Airport Executives -- which brings<BR>20,000 people here every three years -- told them they'd still be coming next year . . . but that after that, it was questionable. <BR><BR>So the Hotel Council decided to do something about it and put up $50,000 for the six-month ad campaign.<BR>The 33 billboards appear across the city (three per supervisorial district) -- each carrying the message "We Want Change." <BR>"We've sat down with the supervisors," Hutar said, "and they are all bright people, but they just seem scared to take on the cottage industry of homeless<BR>service providers," he said. <BR>Well -- not everyone. Hutar says they've already gotten favorable responses from Supervisors Gavin<BR>"Care not Cash" Newsom and Tony Hall. <BR><BR>As for the billboard campaign, McGoldrick said the council would be better off spending its time "trying to solve the problem" rather than "sweep it away. " <BR><BR><BR> <BR> <BR><BR>

Tell (or should I say xxx),<BR><BR>Get a life.

Tom,<BR><BR>I am not xxx. Why can't you admit to the major problems we have here in SF. We should not be misleading people into thinking that SF is something that it is not.

I live in Rochester, New York, and went to San Francisco 2 years ago. We had combined a trip with 4 days in San Diego and 5 in San Fran. If this post was out before we went on our trip...it would've been helpful. San Francisco is ugly, dirty and has crappy weather..in July.<BR>San Diego on the other hand, is excellent, and has grown up. It has more to offer than San Fran in all departments.<BR>I have no idea what people see in this butt city.....<BR>San Fran was so bad , that i looked foward to going back home to Rochester , New York...figure that one out!<BR>

"Lady Spartan" as in San Jose Spartans?<BR>Guess we know why you don't like SF.

This travel board has been blissfully free of Mr./Ms. Spartan, etal, for a few weeks. Then, all of a sudden, in one day, we have all these negative SF posts. Do you really expect us to believe that these are all different people posting the same crap over and over? We've read all this before (I really have trouble understanding the "slam" that SF is not a big city but a small city, isn't that part of the draw?). Crawl back under your rock. Or, are you just back from vacation? Pray tell, where did you go and how was it?

It's funny I read all these negative posts before my family went to San Francisco July 1-6th this month; I was a little concerned. Now that were back My family is here to tell you: San Francisco is truly one of the greatest cities in all of the world! The pure attraction of YOUR city is totally overwhelming. My family has been to many, many destinations and ranks San Francisco as one of BEST if not the best! (Give us a few weeks; we'll miss it even more and it will be the best) My 8-year son said as we were leaving for the airport to return to Atlanta, "Mom I'm going to miss this place, I left my heart in San Francisco."

Roger,<BR><BR>It would have been more appropriate for your son to have left his rectum in San Francisco.

This is what San Francisco has become. It is really sad.<BR><BR>In the San Francisco, men stood on the sidewalks calling out "cheeva" or "solids," slang terms for heroin or<BR>rock cocaine. In Halladie Plaza, with tourists lined up nearby for the<BR>cable car, and BART and Muni commuters<BR>constantly rushing by, young men openly sold marijuana. <BR>Within a block of the Federal Building that houses the FBI on Golden Gate Avenue, homeless men and women fired up crack-cocaine pipes and injected<BR>cocktails of heroin, speed and cocaine. <BR>All of these scenes and more were observed by The Chronicle during a recent study of homelessness in<BR>San Francisco. The city is awash in cheap alcohol and drugs. The<BR>mayor and the police blame the district attorney. The district attorney blames Proposition 36. The city can't<BR>provide treatment for those who want it. <BR><BR>Many homeless people say the availability of drugs and alcohol makes them hard to resist. Substance<BR>abuse was the leading underlying cause of death among San Francisco's homeless in 1997, the latest year for which such data are available from the medical examiner's office. <BR>At Mission and 15th streets, The Chronicle found a somnolent man sticking a needle into his arm, in plain view of pedestrians and motorists. <BR>Sylvia Moreno, a social worker at the nearby Mission Neighborhood Health Clinic, said prostitution and drug use by homeless people has grown more blatant. <BR>"They just shoot up right there, and you know we have children coming here, " said Moreno. <BR>Police officers, businesspeople and, lately, Mayor Willie Brown and his staff have expressed anger with District Attorney Terence Hallinan's office for what they see as leniency on substance abuse cases. <BR>George Smith, head of the Mayor's Office on Homelessness, said Hallinan is missing an opportunity to coerce people into drug and alcohol treatment. <BR>When Officers John Lagios and Scott Huey-Custock found Charles Hood smoking crack cocaine in a doorway on Natoma Street near Fifth Street shortly<BR>after midnight on June 2, they did not bother arresting him, but instead issued him a stern warning. Hood, who said he had been homeless for 15 years, was not impressed. "They ain't got nothing better to do than hassle some crackhead smoking? I'd be out in a few hours anyway. They ought to get the guy who sold it to me." <BR>Lagios pointed to the human feces, the garbage and broken glass from auto burglaries and shook his head. "It scares me what's going on around us and how<BR>everyone has accepted it," the officer said. Hallinan, in office since 1995, says he does prosecute drug cases where possible. <BR>Chris Young, a onetime San Francisco Conservatory of Music student, harpsichord-maker and prostitute,<BR>was a heroin addict living outside for almost two years, nine months in a tarp-covered shanty in an alley near Eighth and Harrison streets. <BR>For a time, Young was able to support his habit playing baroque music in the Civic Center BART station for donations, but then he had to pawn his keyboard. <BR>Young resorted to begging from drivers in traffic. He would beg from inbound motorists at Eighth and Division streets from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., when the<BR>stoplight rhythm changed and vehicles no longer backed up at the signals. <BR>Young would buy heroin, shoot up and nap until about 4 p.m., then beg from outbound commuters on<BR>Bryant Street near the entrance to Highway 80. Then he would go buy more heroin and hope he had enough left over for a shot in the morning. <BR>

Just returned last week from San Fran and we stayed at the Hilton. If was fine, but recommend that you stay in either tower 1 or 2 as the rooms are larger than building 3. Just ask for a tower room. The beds are queen size rather than double, and there are bar fridges, coffee makers etc.

OK - Firsthand knowledge here! Hubby and I just returned from two weeks in S.F. Stayed at the Hilton on O'Farrell....very nice large hotel...safe. Had reservations at the Maxwell but went there a couple days ahead to check it out and cancelled out. Yuk. Our very very favorite was the Westin St. Francis Hotel right on Union Square. It's either a 4 or 5 star hotel, very exclusive, and we got in for $105/night on Starwood.com<BR>You won't find a more upscale hotel with a better location. And we had NO problems w/street people other than a couple peddlers who asked for $$$ & when hubby gave them a firm "No" they bugged off. We were there 2 weeks and had no problems whatsoever. I rode the BART several times by myself cuz hubby was in meetings. Just watch your purse for pick-pockets! Take sweaters & jackets and eat at Nan King in Chinatown...you won't regret it! <BR>

I would also recommend the Westin St. Francis. As already mentioned, it looks right out on Union Square, which was just refurbished. When you book the room, bear in mind that the hotel is divided into the older, historic building that looks onto Union Square, and a newly built section. I think that room rates are the same in each section. I prefer the historic, old building, but a lot of people like the shiny, polished newer section. Be sure to tell the reservation clerk which area you would prefer your room, because it totally changes the feel of your stay.<BR><BR>The Grand Hyatt is a nice hotel, but 1-2 blocks from Union Square, and more of a business hotel than a tourist hotel. Not much character to it.