The Suite Life

Two Suite Selections

Suites in the  Bay Area and Sacramento were what we got in our latest Hotwire.com encounters. We usually use hotwire to pick our hotels. This weekend Hotwire choose a couple of suite hotels for our use.

Variables in Hotwire.com

My variables in picking the selection in Hotwire  measures off stars, all hotels are rated by stars, customer satisfaction rating and  price. In Hotwire, hotels are offered by price and stars  but not by name. Each hotel while not named has a customer satisfaction percentage that allows a judgement to be made on what percentage of the people who chose this accommodation were satisfied. My desired percentage is 80 percent or higher. Once a choice is made and paid for by paypal, the hotel name is revealed.

Amenities are also listed and may factor into the choice. If breakfast is included, that can save the traveler between 8 and 15 dollars per person. This is also critical if your stay is in a industrial setting where options for breakfast require getting in a car and traveling as well as finding your way back. Many of the business hotels in quasi-industrial areas have some very good deals because their usual business, the business expense traveler,  is back at home on the weekends and these businesses do not look good in the occupancy ratings if they are left to languish on the weekends.

Particulars on a Lead up to a Memorial Day Vacation

Which brings us to our travel this last weekend.  We were after an overnight in the San Francisco area on the Thursday before the Memorial Day Weekend. Sue and I were driving over to drop off a neighbor at the airport, see our daughter, look in on the museum and stay overnight. Transport into the city and back was provided by our truck so location in the city was not so important and we were not dependent upon an airport connection either. The best deals in the San Francisco Bay Area if the criteria we live in are met usually occur in the Oyster Point Area of San Francisco. It is important to pick a spot that doesn't require the traveler to pay for parking if possible.  This can add up to 18 dollars to the final tote. These charges are somewhat mitigated in the Anaheim area in their resort fees as the hotels have shuttles that can save you 18 dollars plus in Disneyland parking fees.

Larkspur Landing in South San Francisco

This weekend we just happened to get two suites in the industrial areas selected as our overnight choices. Each had full kitchens and dining areas provided. Both were had parking lot views. One had flat sceeen tvs in both rooms while the other a flat screen tv in the kitchen living room area. Both were represented as handicapped accessible, and both were on the third floor.

In South San Francisco we spent the night at a Larkspur Landing Suites hotel. It is a Stash hotel. It comes with a great 50+ flat screen tv with a DVD player and selections of check out DVDs at the front desk. It had a very nice feather bed topper style bed that was very comfortable.

Accessible features in this one  was a pull down shower chair in the tub with a removable shower head. An 18in toilet also is a nice addition.  This one passes.

The art in the halls showed some taste. There were prints from Georgia O'Keef and a fly fishing print from one of the Taos collectives, Walter Ufer.

Overall this place has the look and feel of an upscale extended stay place.There was even a grocery store gofer service. You leave a list in the morning and they would have your groceries for you in the afternoon.

The night was quiet, and nestled inside the South San Francisco Industrial complex on the east side of 101 there didn't seem to be much going on in the cubicle jungles of buildings around us. Starbucks was not within walking distance. Breakfast was strictly continental with a healthy theme of a couple of oatmeal types and toasters brought into the business area off of the small check in lobby.

We used a smart phone app to get us to the site off of Gateway which is an extension of Grand Ave. with a whoops si doodle overpass for the freeway and the train tracks.

We used our truck to get some burritos from El Faro on El Camino. This happens to be Sue's favorite burrito spot.

Hawthorne Suites Inn Sacramento

The Friday night we were staying in Sacramento. Later I discovered that this weekend was Sacramento's famous Music Festival weekend. It used to be strictly Dixeland. It now has broken off and become Blues and Dixieland and Jazz. I think overall the downtown spots were reserved way before we did our hotwire search.

Our usual search leaves us with a Holiday Inn Express just blocks from the center of town for about 54 dollars a night. When you factor in breakfast it is a great deal. This night's deal was a 59 dollar selection that also claimed to be downtown.. but that was a stretch. Those people headed up to Redding on I 5 would recognize the Richardson turnoff as the last turnoff to the city before it becomes suburban.

There was just a removable shower head for their idea of accessibility. We were in the top floor which was near the mainlobby.

This is a semi industrial area of Sacramento. There are low level office buildings all around this campus looking complex.

The Hawthorne Inn is Wydham hotel. It looks a little dated in its current form, although it worked out for us. It looks like it is set up for a large conference, with everyone getting a work area in their room. We were on the top floor, the third with very tall ceilings. The coffee maker had single basket Seattle's best in it. The breakfast was super. sausage, eggs, three waffle makers, juice bar, yogurt refridge, hard boiled eggs on ice, loose fruit, packaged danish.

The lobby area was expansive. Some people were waiting across the way for a shuttle bus to take them to the festival and several that were eating breakfast had on their festival buttons ready to go. It looked like everyone was counting on the breakfast and took decent advantage. There were all sorts of people staying. Some young families, and some extended families were also there. There were just a couple of couples in their 25-30's in the mix.

The road home took us over the Old Sacramento area. Sue looked down and saw that the streets were blocked from vehicular traffic and the people were crowded on the streets. The temperature was starting to climb into the upper 80's even a 12:30.

Overall it was a nice experience to see the difference in the Suite accommodations from both settings. There was a difference but overall unless you were going to spend serious time in either the upgrade from the100 dollar a night Larkspur Landing from the Hawthorne would not be worth it.