The Sir Francis Drake is a historic boutique hotel just off San Francisco's Union Square. On its website, the hotel is marketed as "Newly Renovated Historic Hotel in San Francisco's Union Square". I really don't know which part of this hotel was newly renovated but if I can summarise my stay here in one word, it's "old". Again, according to its website, the hotel received a "Best of CitySearch" award as the Best Union Square Hotel for 2006. The standards for the award must be awfully low for the Sir Francis to win the award. Suffice to say, this is not going to be a favourable review of this historic hotel and I will outline the reasons why.

Location

Its location cannot be faulted. It is just off the central shopping district of Union Square and it's situated on Powell Street which is also one of the main cable car routes through the city. So it's quite cool to be able to see the historic cable cars going past the hotel. 

Staff

The hotel staff are all generally very friendly and helpful with one exception. The only staff member I encountered which displayed a less than pleasant attitude was the person who checked me in on arrival. He had a really weird and somewhat cocky attitude. I definitely did not pick up any good impressions of the hotel with him behind the front desk. But he is an anomaly as all the other staff members I dealt with quite friendly. The most famous staff member of the hotel being Tom Sweeney, the hotel's doorman who has served the hotel for 30 years. A truly friendly and chatty guy. I had a really good conversation with Tom while waiting for my shuttle to go to the airport. And in that short space of about 15 minutes, numerous people were stopping by to speak to him. He's definitely a local celebrity.

Okay, I got all the good bits out of the way in this review. The room, if I can even call it that, was just horrible. First of all, it was the smallest hotel room that I've ever stayed at. It was the most cramped and uncomfortable space that would normally qualify as a broom closet. There were no side tables next to the bed for you put your usual personal items and the bathroom was so cramped that I had to put my toiletries outside on the work table. The shower cabinet was extremely dimly lit and the bathroom door wouldn't even close properly.

But that's not the worst part of the room. My room was literally right next to the lift / elevator. I can reach my room door without even getting out of the lift / elevator ! What a ridiculous place to put a room. And being a "historic" hotel, the sound proofing was virtually non-existent and I was treated to every crank and pop of the lift / elevator operations.

And everything was old. Okay so it had an LCD TV, but that was about it. This was absolutely the worst room I've ever stayed in, in all my travels. It looked nothing like the photos on the website.

Summary

Let's just say that I will never be staying at this hotel ever again. I gave this a one star because Tom Sweeney is a cool guy. If you do decide to stay at this hotel despite this review, try and avoid room 1915.

LifeSpike rating :

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