California: The Donatello

After taking the BART back from Berkeley, we headed straight towards Union Square, which is a terrific shopping area just west of the main part of downtown San Francisco. We dropped our car off at the Union Square rental location and pulled our bags the 2 blocks to our hotel, The Donatello. I just can't explain how much we loved this hotel! It was kind of the opposite of the Sofitel, in that the lobby was nothing spectacular and quite small, but the room itself was fantastic. While doing research on San Francisco hotels we'd read over and over how small all the rooms in the city are, but this room was extremely spacious and comfortable. It was so much bigger than our room at the Sofitel it wasn't even funny!

The hotel also had free Internet access, a free continental breakfast in the penthouse lounge, and a small kitchenette and nice sized flat screen t.v. in our room--none of which seems that unusual for a nice hotel, but none of which our first hotel had. We didn't try the Donatello's restaurant or fitness center, so we can't vouch for those amenities, but the staff was always ultra helpful and super polite. Overall we just loved our stay there. We later heard that some of the units at the Donatello are timeshares, but that it's very difficult to buy into because the demand is so high. I can totally understand why! The location is so perfect and the rooms are just so livable!

This perfect location was just a couple of blocks off of Union Square, which is one of the best shopping areas in the city, so after checking in and relaxing for a while we headed down to the square and walked in and out of several shops and stores. There's a Macy's just off the square that's like 8 floors--and that's not counting the men's store across the street. I was so overwhelmed in that place there was no way I could find anything that I might want to buy! Where do you even begin? There were shoes alone on like three different floors!

After a couple hours of shopping we still weren't hungry for dinner since we'd had such a big lunch in Berkeley. We stopped by a Borders and grabbed big pretzels at their cafe, and then headed back to the hotel to call it an evening. We needed a good night's rest to prepare for the next day's adventure!