San Francisco, same day, hotel...

To read the previous part click here -> Streets of San Francisco, day one, the beginning...

I wouldn't say that we weren't tired after a few hours walking the streets. So we decided to go and leave our stuff at the hotel and stay motionless for a while. Actually finding a hotel room in August in San Francisco is a quest you don't want to do. So many people are traveling for business or pleasure and not as many hotels there. The prices are high and the rooms are scarce. And also we were picky about location as we didn't plan on renting a car, so we needed something close to downtown that made our search for a hotel even more difficult. But... I was lucky and found one that we liked very much.

 

San Remo hotel located on a nice and quiet street close to everything we needed. Also we liked that it wasn't part of any chain and didn't look cloned. You know what I am talking about, right? You pull to the entrance and you cannot tell the difference between staying on the West or East coasts... All the rooms look like twins and in the morning you don't really know where you spent last night... San Remo hotel is one of a kind! It tells you a story and you can feel the history of the place once you are in. It is just over a hundred years old (isn't it nice?) and was built in 1906 after a big fire that wiped so many SF buildings. Located in the predominantly Italian area it was really popular among the immigrants. It remembers every Italian who stayed there. And it keeps the homey look and feel and you really expect the stranger you just meet there is going to speak Italian and give you all rumors about his family somewhere across the ocean ;)

The first floor in this building is the restaurant and the hotel takes the second and third floors. Entering the door you climb the L-shape staircase and find yourself in the small hall where you need to fill out the form and get the keys. Right, the old-fashion keys, not the card or code to open the door, but the real keys ;)

The corridors there look just like streets somewhere in Italy - narrow and overgrown by plants. All the rooms there are different. And all the furniture is different. And you can just walk along the street (sorry, the corridor) and pick one you like more! So we did - we found one with the window facing the yard, not the corridor and moved there. Yes, believe it or not, but these windows are not outside windows but inside ones ;)

We explored all open rooms and both floors and liked it even more. It was so nice and so different, it was something special and that was what we were looking for. Even the lack of the AC didn't scare us (and, actually, it was fine and we slept like babies with windows opened). Another thing some people might not like much is the bathrooms are shared but located at the end of the hallway. But for one night stay it was OK, so...

Finally we found a creaky spiral staircase leading to the roof. Unfortunately the door was closed and we had no opportunity to look what we could find up there. So we moved back to our room and unpacked our bags. At this moment we already didn't feel all the tiredness and were ready to explore the city again... But we will talk about that next time, if you don't mind.

To continue reading click here -> Streets of San Francisco, end of the first day

Pictures were taken on August 30, 2011.