Kimpton Sir Francis Drake Hotel

Convenient, classic hotel with nice sized rooms, but undersized bathrooms. Hotel is located on cable car route with many nice restaurants and bars within easy walking distance. Would certainly recommend staying at the Beacon Grande at Union Square.

Make sure you check to see if people are still striking across the street; otherwise, you will hear drums, loud shouting, and annoyance from 7AM-10PM every single day! It's terrible and sounds like a marching band is right in your room for 15 hours straight. From what I understand, this goes on for months at a time and while it's not this hotel on strike, being right across the street you will hear EVERYTHING and you won't be able to think straight the entire time. The hotel won't tell you in advance this is happening, only upon the arrival, so make sure to call and ask ahead of time and do yourself a favor and find an alternative solution to your stay.

I will not go back. Rooms were small and there was no communication about the noise outside of the hotel with the strike happening, no special accommodations to help us feel supported even if it isn't due to their actions. I could barely sleep. It was rough.

Had a great time staying at the Beacon grand with a group of buddies who are in town to see a show. Cocktails at the Starlite was a highlight! Staff was awesome, thanks to everybody there. Highly recommend the valet parking for ease of getting in and out.

Hotel with a lot of character and history, tastefully restored in a very central location. Very grand lobby, and check in was efficient. Bathroom looked great, but flooded completely when the walk-in shower was used for more than 3 minutes. This required us to ask for additional towels that we could use to stop the room from flooding, which housekeeping provided (and then some). Unfortunately on our last day housekeeping did give us extra towels, but did not replace the glasses in the room, or empty the bins. Postroom restaurant was a bit hit & miss. We reserved a table for the first night in advance of our stay, but when we turned up at 7, they couldn't find our reservation (even though we received multiple OpenTable confirmations). After a short wait they then brought us to a table for 7 people instead of a table for 2 at 7.... Instead we were then ushered to a high table in the corner of the restaurant, with a really small table that didn't have room for the food we ordered... The food was great though. On the first night we also booked & visited the top-floor Starlite bar, which has amazing views of the city as well as great cocktails (note this is only open Friday - Sunday). There were protests happening outside the neighbouring Marriott hotel, as there were at other hotels across Union Square, which wasn't mentioned at all by the hotel (apart from a letter and provided earplugs in our room). These were loud during the daytime, it could be clearly heard from our 14th floor room, but luckily stopped at 10pm (starting again at 7am).