Inside The Argonaut Hotel in San Francisco

January 12, 2010 at 11:28 AM | by markj | Comments (0)

Longtime readers of HotelChatter know The Argonaut Hotel is one of our go-to hotels in San Francisco. Why? Good rates, comfortable beds, kitschy nautical theme and free WiFi (for Kimpton's InTouch members.) Oh, and most importantly, we don't have to deal with the glut of Union Square that makes life with a rental car extremely difficult.

Caveat emptor; you must be able to put up with Fisherman's Wharf (we actually have grown to love the area if you take a left instead of a right out of the Argonaut front door and avoid the Powell & Hyde cable car debacle), and on this trip we figured out parking was a whopping $43.00 a night.

If you are thinking that means it might be time to go back to playing parking ticket chicken with the SF parking police, think again, meter expiration now carries a $63.00 fine in SF. (However, if you drive a hybrid, you get 25 percent of the hotel's parking rate.)

The good news? It isn't hard to drink back your parking fee during Kimpton's 5 - 6 pm free happy hour. In any event, heading into 2010 we found the Argonaut service is still top notch, and the key, as always, is to get a room with a view.

Negatives? Aside from the parking fee, it is really hard for us to look at a CRT television in 2010, oh, and don't go if you can't handle kids running around in the lobby -- your are in the middle of a tourist spot.

Bottom Line: We booked directly through KimptonHotels.com and paid $184 a night. Considering this was right before New Year's Eve and that we paid $15 more for a room with a view, we'd say it was a rather good deal.

HotelChatter

Select a Destination:

Video / Hotel Video Tours / Kimpton Hotels / Fisherman's Wharf Hotels / San Francisco Hotels / → All Tags