Are you going to San Francisco?

What a weekend.

My husband and I just got back from what we lovingly call "AN ESCAPE!!", complete with exclamation points. We actually got out of town over the weekend-- sans kids. It was a huge achievement, in no small part because when you have 7 kids, escaping without one tucked away anywhere is pretty tricky.

We headed up to The City midday Friday, out before the crazy hail storms hit (battled by you brave people we left behind)-- but into the same crazy rain storms that continued to pound our beleaguered, beautiful state.

While we didn’t make it in time for the Anchor Brewery Tour (which happens once daily and is FREE), we did enjoy meeting up with my friends from Imaginaria (friends made on the Internet—ones you don’t usually ever see, but meet up with almost daily in the ether) throughout the weekend.

Of the many things I’d love to share about this fabulous getaway, if you are planning on traveling to San Francisco anytime soon, heed these two bits of advice:

1)    BART: I hate driving into The City, especially since we end up walking everywhere anyway. Parking at our hotel was going to be $35 per day. No way did I want to fork out $105 just so my car could sit nearby. We had considered Amtraking the whole way, but that would have ended up being over $200 round trip for the both of us. Forget it. Investigating other options, we discovered that heading into Pleasanton and parking at the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station would by far be our best bet. The BART fare was $11.00 roundtrip, each. Parking was $1.00. For the ENTIRE WEEKEND. I KNOW, RITE?

2)    HOTEL VERTIGO: Staying at a hotel in The City can be crazy expensive, and then when you hoof it up the stairs to your room, you often find that you’re staying in a wardrobe closet. A friend recommended Hotel Vertigo to us—a kitschy little hotel in the Nob Hill/Union Square area. Newly renovated, our room was not only chic and very, very modern, it was actually a fairly large room. Best part? $87.00 per night. IN SAN FRANCISCO. Not too far from the BART station, close to Union Square, and downright adorable.
So if you’re planning a quick getaway or a romantic stay in San Francisco in the near future—to paraphrase Henny Youngman: TAKE MY ADVICE, PLEASE.