Bancroft Hotel

As a treat for Fernando, we are staying at the Bancroft Hotel on Bancroft Avenue, about a block west of International House.  I thought he would enjoy staying almost in the same location as he did when he was a student.  The Hotel is a former women's club, which then turned sorority and then in 1989, after the earthquake, was closed and retrofitted.  In 1990 it opened as a hotel - or at least that was the history that one of the staff gave us.

Our room is small and there is no elevator so we have to hike up the stairs to our room on the third floor.  I'm finding that by the end of the day, my right knee is quite stiff so I'm rethinking stairs after this trip.  Yesterday we spent all day in San Francisco, following the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf on foot, riding it back to Sutter, walking down to Grant, then along Grant till Stockton came out of the tunnel, down Stockton to Broadway, then back to Columbus, to Montgomery and eventually up Montgomery to Market.  It was at that point, when my right knee started complaining, that I realized that the BART stations don't believe in escalators!!  The majority of exits are by stairs with a couple of elevators.  Wait 10 years when all the baby boomers have decrepit knees and the elevator lines are as long as the cable car lines.  In DC they have lots of escalators, especially those going up.  But I digress...

Our hotel room opens unto a little shared balcony with four full length glass doors, the only disadvantage being that you can't sleep with the windows open since there are only the doors.  But it is cool enough here that the room doesn't get overheated.  I'm just glad that one can open the windows and not have to rely on air conditioners for a breath of fresh air.

The shampoo/conditioner/body lotion/soaps are by EO and are wonderfully fragrant.  I'm taking them home.  I don't think I'll be able to afford the real thing unless they show up in Marshalls.  The hotel markets itself as sustainable and ecologically friendly and they have a container for trash and one for recyclables.  Their morning continental breakfast has real dishes and silverware so one doesn't have to eat with plastic forks and paper plates, although they have those too (I think they are made of corn or potatoes).

Papi has picked up a Berkeley sweatshirt (all the Asian students wear them) and has revisited all the old haunts of his student days, like Kips, where we went with the Latin students for pizza and beer, although now the majority of the room is taken up by a bar and we were about the only ones there -- of course it was only 5 pm and it is the summer.  We ate french fries along with the beer and so were too tired and full to stop by Top Dog for a hot dog.  That's where Fernando took my on our first 'date'.  We were supposed to go out later after a short 'rest' but I was still asleep at 11 pm and Fernando decided to call it a day...

This morning we hope to go up to the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden before we leave for Susan's.  I'll add photos later.