For our 5th and, sadly, final stop of our California road trip, we stayed in the Hotel Monaco in San Francisco, just off of Union Square. Unfortunately, San Francisco does not put its best foot forward in August. While the rest of the country bakes in the summer sun, clouds descend on San Francisco and make for a dreary, chilly month. Neither my wife nor I packed warm clothes, so it took all of one hour before we ducked into a store for some warm weather gear. After baking in the Napa sun, it was quite a shock to be hit with a weather forecast of 50 degrees and gloomy.
But, as I've come to expect from the Kimpton Hotels, the staff at the Hotel Monaco greeted us with a smile. We spoke the "secret word" from the Kimpton summer twitter promotion and received coupons for free breakfast -- getting freebies is always a great way to start a hotel stay! The room, unfortunately, was on the small side and, unlike what we found at the Standard in New York, was not laid out to maximize space. Rather than a closet, there was a huge standing chest, which took up a good portion of the back wall. But, we were in San Francisco to walk the city and not to stay in the room, so we wouldn't let the room size deter us from having a great stay.
Although the weather didn't totally cooperate, we loved the trip to San Francisco. Those energetic enough to walk the hills of the city are rewarded with absolutely amazing views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Bay Bridge, Alcatraz, Coit Tower and the other great sites. We spent the day walking around Golden Gate Park (which is filled with museums, drum circles, a botanical garden, tea garden and acres of green space), Haight-Ashbury, Sunset, Marina, Japantown, Chinatown, Pacific Heights and everything in between.
My dream would be to stay in San Francisco and do a daily food tour -- the quantity and quality of great restaurants is just astounding, from the high-end American, French and Vietnamese (Slanted Door is out of this world) to farmers' markets and holes in the wall, you could eat and eat for days on end and never get sick of the food!
We only had about a day and a half to tour the city, so we did our own walking tour, sampling small wine bars, pizza at A16 and snacks along the way. Although the weather didn't put the city in the greatest light, we had a wonderful time nonetheless. As we boarded the plane back to DC, we discussed our plan for our next trip back out west.