The ups and downs of staying on San Francisco's Nob Hill

San Francisco's Nob Hill, that former bastion of railroad magnates, is typically too pricey a place for the likes of my husband and me. But by following an important credo of hotel searching -- always check the website of the hotel itself -- we managed to find a special rate for four days of our recent visit to the city. We embedded ourselves at the Stanford Court Hotel, paying $178 on a Saturday night, $131 Sunday, $139 Monday and $148 Tuesday (plus $30 a day in various taxes and fees, alas). These are amazing hotel rates for San Francisco, even for something much smaller and more downscale at the bottom of the hill.

We were coming in from Napa in a rent car, so while hubby turned that in, I checked us in and -- without any tip or request or anything -- was given an upgrade from our standard king room to a big king room with a view. The hotel had no idea I was a travel writer, so this wonderful and weird. Here's the view:

As you can see, we could spy the Transamerica Tower, the spire of the Ferry Building (it's the wee stick in the back to the left of the tall, uninteresting building) and lots of bay -- far more than my phone's camera could accommodate in one shot. We also got to look down onto Nob Hill's penthouses. I love looking down on penthouses.

The Stanford is far from a new hotel, but the bed was great, with top-flight linens, and the room offered plenty of space to walk around ub, a big bathroom, room coffee, a fridge, a safe, a desk and good service all around (and a fitness center without a resort fee or similar, thank you). So: We were extremely happy with the room and its view. Checking today, we find rates for this hotel all over the place, with a standard king going for as little as $118 some days and $400 on others. This sort of San Francisco pricing, which has everything to do with whether there's a big convention in town, had led us to, in recent years, change our strategy for booking trips. We book the hotel before we find the airfare. It's no good to get a cheap airplane, then get clobbered by high hotel rates.

But, back to Nob Hill: The hotel notwithstanding, there were two negatives, and they both have to do with the pedestrian experience. One is that, obviously, it's at the top of a hill. A very steep climb is necessary to get home after you've been out. For that matter, the descent isn't always easy, as I found when I minced downhill at about a 40 degree angle in heels. The good news is that you'll have calves of steel after ascending the hill for a few days. More good news: Cabs in San Francisco, unlike those pretty much anywhere else in the country, are willing to run you up a hill without giving you grief or overcharging you. We're talking about $6 to go from Powell and Market up to Powell and California. Taking the cable car would've cost $6 each, so the cab was the way to go.

The second pedestrian negative held true for all four days we were there. Not sure it's a constant. The traffic lights were nothing but blinking reds at all of the top-of-the-hill intersections. This is a flat pedestrian waiting to happen. Every time a car let us cross, it got angry honks from vehicles behind it, and once an angry motorist peeled out with a screech that told us he'd far rather have mashed us. I am hoping this situation was temporary -- although four days is way too long -- and won't often be repeated. Traffic engineers, please stay on top of this.

Let's close with one more positive-negative: food and beverage. There aren't a lot of restaurants at the top of Nob Hill. The ones that are there are mostly affiliated with hotels and very expensive. (At the moment, the Stanford Court doesn't have a restaurant, although it offers morning coffee and breakfast items for sale in the lobby, and they're both very good.) That's a minus. For those who enjoy the odd upscale cocktail, though, you'll never do better than Nob Hill. The Big Four, with its piano music, is one of our favorites (new piano guy is good, although we miss Michael). The Fairmont's Tonga Room is hilarious. All the bars are good, though none is cheap. (I'll do a later blog on cheap SF cocktails, I promise.)

Final analysis: We'll probably climb back up Nob Hill. But only when one of those specials is under way.

The trouble with airlines: They want to go steady without a real commitment

Airfarewatchdog and I were talking today about the old days, when we used to love Frontier Airlines. Here was this great, new airline that seemed to care about its customers. There was decent legroom. There was free seatback entertainment. There were no fees, but, then, in those days nobody had fees.

I won't even fly Frontier today. It's too much like Spirit and Allegiant -- a subclass airline that packs on fees for absolutely everything and provides a minimal flying experience. I've learned over the years not to get too attached to an airline.

Every now and then, though, I fall in love. Regular readers know how deeply I fell for JetBlue and how disappointed I was with a recent customer service experience. Now, we learn -- and this is no surprise, given stockholder pressure -- that JetBlue is about to give us less legroom and start charging for checked bags if you buy the cheapest ticket. And for those of us who pay for our own tickets, the cheapest tickets are what we buy.

Like most failed relationships, mine with JetBlue carries baggage. I still have a ton of JetBlue miles. I'll try to book trips before the bag fee kicks in early next year and the more cramped seats (although JetBlue swears they'll still offer more room than "the other guys," which wouldn't be hard) arrive in 2016, but I might not be able to use the miles up that fast.

Like many of you, I've been throwing out disgruntled posts about the changes on social media. Will our posts change JetBlue's mind? They will not. Because JetBlue, like every other airline, wants to go steady -- wants us to be loyal, join their club, get their credit card, accrue miles, then buy more tickets to accrue more miles  -- but has absolutely no intention of every getting married. As far as airlines are concerned, we passengers are fun to take along on the occasional trip, but, hey: They never said they'd take us home to meet Mom. Their commitment is to increasing income. This, too, is no surprise. Airlines are businesses. Businesses don't exist to love and honor; they exist to make money.

So, your favorite airline might be a really good boyfriend, but it's never going to marry you. What's your best ploy? Refuse to go steady. Shop around to all the airlines for the very best fare that offers the best experience. Get every single credit card of every single airline, and use these strategically.  But don't go making too much of a commitment to any one airline. Be a player. Because they are.

Travel vs. taking out the trash: a tough call

If you're reading this over breakfast, don't. Put down the Cheerios. OK, read on:

Here we go again, taking off on a trip while a half-full can of smelly trash sits, uncollected, at the side of our house. By the time we return, new lives will have taken shape within the can, and the simple act of wheeling it to the curb will require a mask.

It didn't have to be this way. We could have delayed our departure by one day -- OK, a day and a half, to make sure the garbage truck actually came and picked up the garbage -- and we wouldn't be coming back to a maggot farm. But we refuse to craft our lives around the once-a-week Austin garbage pickup schedule, and we have to live with that.

A life of frequent travel is a life of tradeoffs, and garbage pickup is but one of them. Others:

1. The sprinkler system. The city allows us to water but once a week. If we're gone Wednesday, nothing gets watered. OK, then: We xeriscaped the yard. All rock and desert plants. As they say in the movies dubbed for TV: Forget you, watering schedule.

2. The newspaper deliveries. These are easy to stop, but as we all know, stuff happens when you're on the road. You sometimes don't get back when you think you well. Papers pile up. Oh, well. No solution for that one except asking a kind neighbor to grab them.

3. The mail. Same situation as No. 2, except there's a solution that doesn't annoy a neighbor: a locking mailbox. Everything can pile up as much as it wants without risk.

4. Those awful advertising door hangers people put on the door knob. And it's political season, so there are many. Same solution as No. 2.

...which leaves us with the rotten garbage as the only real impediment to heading out the door right this minute. Fine. Off we go.

Why it's so hard to find a newspaper at your hotel

It's always annoying to me when a hotel PR person showing me around a property says with obvious pride, "We don't have any newspapers here because we try to be green."

It apparently doesn't occur to that person that newspapers and magazines are what pay for the food I eat and the roof over my head. Not that it would matter. Although I am always thrilled to find a USA Today -- or any other paper -- outside my hotel room door or in the lobby, that tradition is fading. And it's not just about being green.


Housekeeping staffs just hate newspapers. Fewer people read them these days, so some just sit outside hotel rooms until the staff picks them up. The people who do read them tend to disembowel them and leave them scattered across the room. What should be done with them? Throw them away or put them back together neatly (time-consuming and annoying) and leave them for the guest? Newspapers also trash up lobbies pretty effectively. Finally, there's the expense of getting them. Hotels sometimes try to pass that cost on to guests, but it makes us mad, especially if we aren't told about it in advance.

So: Newspapers are going away. A few hotels substitute a small iPad on which we're told we can not only read the day's news, but also order room service. Meh, I can do without that. I have a phone and a tablet of my own, which I'd rather use than theirs. What I like best, though, is a nice, big, ink-and-paper newspaper to spread out and read while I drink my room coffee, assuming there's room coffee -- but that's a subject to whine about another day.

Charge! The case for never letting your phone go dead in an airport

Frequent travelers, you've doubtless heard that there's a new TSA rule that "from some airports" (undefined; TSA always likes keeping us -- and the bad guys -- on edge), if you're traveling back to the U.S. from another country with an electronic device, you'd better be able to turn it on. Dead battery? Tell your device goodbye. It can't travel, and maybe you can't, either. At the very least, you'll be subjected for more screening.

We understand there's a specific terrorist threat that prompted this action, but, obviously, it does add yet another complication to travel. Your devices -- cell phones, Kindles, iPads, laptops, everything -- MUST be charged up at all times. This requires you to carry many types of chargers, and it's not a bad idea to also bring along a small portable charger in case, as is often the case, you find your phone running low at an airport before your journey is over and all the plugs already are occupied.

When should you make sure your devices are fully charged? All the time. Not just when you're coming back from abroad. Because now we're hearing reports (unconfirmed, I will warn) that some TSA folks are forcing people to turn on electronics on domestic flights. Yes, those within the U.S. And because Austin-Bergstrom International has consistently been one of the most stringent in the U.S. for TSA checks, from my personal experience (this is the only airport that sometimes makes me take off metal-free sandals in the Pre-check line), I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to be asked to turn on my phone here. I don't expect it, but I wouldn't be surprised. I make it a policy never to be surprised by new TSA procedures. Toward that end, I try to travel with as few things as possible that matter deeply to me. I must have my wallet and phone. Beyond that, I consider all my stuff expendable, because who's to say when the bad guys might suddenly start creating bombs in bras, curling irons or cough drops?


Also, of course, you should plan for spending more time in the security line. British papers are already reporting longer lines at some airports, including Heathrow, where phones are being examined. For that matter, I've noticed that the TSA folks who look in the bag-scanning machine have been examining things much more closely -- and for a longer period of time -- at all the airports I've been through this summer.

Finally, I will note that some reports mention that TSA will also be taking a closer look at shoes. They're welcome to inspect mine. They seem to like to do that anyway.

Five reasons to go to South Padre Island right now

Don't you just hate that I'm doing that? Going with the "five reasons" peg and using that "right now" imperative that's so excruciatingly trendy in travel writing right now? Me, too. But here we go with a summary gleaned from the trip to my South Padre Island condo from which I've just returned -- with a healthy sun glow and seriously ratty beach hair:

1. The weather is perfect. OK, I'm talking about right now -- it could change at any minute -- but the temps are in the 80s with a nice breeze. It's Texas, it's summer, and it's not 100. Go quickly, before that's no longer the case.

2. The seaweed invasion has slowed significantly. Although the mounds of already-raked seaweed against the dunes do, sadly, made the beach smaller than usual at high tide, the tide goes back out again, and the amount of seaweed washing ashore right now -- as opposed to what's been going on for about three months -- is the usual, small daily amount. Keep in mind that seaweed is good for the dunes, and try not to be bummed when you see it.

3. There are more ways to enjoy the water than ever. To parasailing, surfing, wind surfing, kiteboarding, kayaking, fishing, dolphin cruising, stand-up paddle boarding and personal watercraft zooming (always my least favorite), add two distinctly South Padre cruises: (1) The Black Dragon Pirate Cruise -- a thrilling pirate-themed cruise on a tricked-out pirate ship that typically also includes a chance to see dophins (book it in nearby Port Isabel next to Pirates Landing) and (2) a sunset dinner cruise (book it behind Laguna Bob's bar) that includes grilled shrimp and fajitas, along with music.

4. Fireworks all summer long: Thursday and Friday nights over the bay (watch from Louie's Backyard or Coconuts) and Saturday night over the beach (Clayton's Beach Bar). Oooh. Aaaah.

5.  Sand Castles. There's a new Sand Castle Trail guiding you to about 30 (they come and go; it's sand) professional castles around the island, and numerous of those pros offer sand-sculpting lessons (The Amazin' Walter, Sandy Feet, Andy Hancock -- google any of them; they're all great fun). It's the new hot activity on the island.

Check Below For Errors

I advise you to check this post for errors, because surely I've made one. More likely, four or five. I draw this conclusion from the fact that I typically have to go back at least several times when I'm trying to book a flight because I've filled something out wrong or neglected one of the many boxes.

"Check below for errors," I am directed in red. Sure enough, I find that I have not de-selected buying trip insurance. So I check the box: No, I will travel without insurance ("you idiot," is implied). Once again: "Check below for errors." Ah. I see when the first error was flagged, the secret (not-so-secret these days, because everybody demands it) three-number code on the back of my card depopulated its space. I fill it in again. "Check below for errors." Ah. Forgot to accept the terms and conditions. "Check below for errors." Dangit, now the trip insurance thing has depopulated and I have to fill it in again.

It all gets pretty confusing, in large part because we have to decline the opportunity to spend more money on numerous occasions. OK, on this particular booking I had to accept an extra fee because when it came time to select my seat, only seats carrying an extra $19 charge were available. One seat cost $19 merely to sit next to a window. The others were $19 for more leg room. So I chose both the leg room and a window seat for $19. But I'd have preferred a middle seat free (or, rather, for the $149 I agreed to pay for the one-way ticket), American Airlines.

Anyway, having filled out all the various blanks, I'm flying my flight. The good news is: Barring any crises, this is the last airplane flight I will book for 2014. My blood pressure's about to go way down.

UPDATE: American said "Check below for errors." Through Twitter, I'm told that I could decline to pick any of the extra-$19 seats on the map and just wait until I got to the airport for a seat assignment. I didn't see that option listed, and every seat besides the extra-pay seats was x-ed out on the map. I'd sort of feel like I was flying standby, waiting to see if business travelers declined all the extra-pay seats so I could have one. But that's the way things are these days. Anyway, having made that correction, I await notifications of more.