San Francisco, United States

Lodge at the Presidio

Price per night from$350.00

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD350.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Bridge-facing barracks

Setting

Golden Gate greenery

In the middle of a forested national park, The Lodge at the Presidio is an army outpost that’s now a boutique red-brick barracks. The Golden Gate looms large in every backdrop, whether you’re by the fire-pit, out on the lawn or in your room (if you’ve booked it wisely) – this is the closest lodging to the supersize rust-coloured steel structure in all of California. Shuttles run back and forth to downtown San Fran, but there’s 1,500 acres of woodland, trails, beaches and restaurants to get through first. At the lodge, pay homage to the soldiers who used to sleep here by admiring their likenesses in the artworks adorning the walls, or see if you can spot the marks the armoury left on the original wooden floors.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A selection of chocolate truffles; GoldSmiths get a bottle of wine too

Facilities

Photos Lodge at the Presidio facilities

Need to know

Rooms

42, including one suite.

Check–Out

11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £320.18 ($404), including tax at 15.5 per cent.

More details

Rates usually include breakfast, along with local wine, cheese and charcuterie parties between 5pm and 7pm each evening.

Also

The hotel is accessible for wheelchair users and there are specially adapted rooms available.

At the hotel

Board games to borrow, free WiFi throughout. In rooms: air-conditioning, minibar, free bottled water, tea and coffee kit, and EO bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Suspension-bridge fans who’ve come to admire their holy grail should book a Golden Gate-facing room (obviously). We also loved Room 113, for its veranda access and sunrise-ready spot.

Packing tips

There’s a 1,500-acre park on your doorstep: if you want to fit in, pack that suitcase with all the Lululemon activewear it can handle.

Also

The lodge is set in the Montgomery Street Barracks, which were built between 1895 and 1897, and were once one of the biggest garrisons in the country.

Pet‐friendly

Furry Smiths can come along for $40 a booking, even if they’re huge (there’s no weight restriction); dog bowls and a bed will be provided. See more pet-friendly hotels in San Francisco.

Children

All ages are welcome. There are rooms with two queen-size beds that are perfect for families. Some rooms have child-friendly sofa beds, too.

Sustainability efforts

The hotel recycles, composts and uses eco-friendly cleaning products and light bulbs.

Food and Drink

Photos Lodge at the Presidio food and drink

Top Table

Shotgun a fireside leather sofa to brush up on your Californian military history, warm up by the Golden Gate-facing fire-pit or get cosy in a rocking chair on the porch.

Dress Code

Since there’s no formal restaurant, you won’t need to switch out of your athleisure wear – keep the leggings on for swift sprints back from your taco run to Arguello.

Hotel restaurant

There’s no restaurant at the lodge, but the park does have a handful of restaurants within strolling distance. Bagels and bakery goods are served in the dining room each morning.
 

Hotel bar

There’s no bar at the lodge, but the minibar has a ready-to-raid stash of liquor and mixers.

Last orders

Breakfast hours are 7am to 10am on weekdays, and until 11am at weekends.

Location

Photos Lodge at the Presidio location
Address
Lodge at the Presidio
105 Montgomery St
San Francisco
94129
United States

The hotel is in the Presidio Park overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, close to the city but also within a forested, former-military-base setting.

Planes

San Francisco International Airport is 18 miles away from the lodge; the drive should take 45 minutes. Hotel transfers cost US$98 each way.

Automobiles

It’s about a 45-minute drive into the centre of San Francisco. The hotel car park costs US$10 a day (drop your bags off first). A car will come in handy if you’re planning to explore California’s coolest city and its curving coastline – but there’s a 1,500-acre national park to get through first if you’d rather stay put.

Worth getting out of bed for

You have a best-of-both kind of situation here: on the one hand, you have the endless acreage of the Presidio Park, and on the other, all the sights of San Francisco. The building itself has plenty of book-reading and board-game-playing potential, or you can wander around the grounds admiring the architecture. Hiking is the unofficial state pastime of California and here it comes with a side order of Golden Gate Bridge views: the Presidio has various trails, which you can walk, cycle and jog along. The Presidio Officers’ Club, which was inaugurated in 1776, is now the park’s official, free-to-enter museum – and, if you’re not a museum kinda guy, just go for the Mexican food. Crissy Field Beach is the perfect destination if you like your swims, cycles and seafront strolls to overlook that awesome feat of 1930s architecture, the Golden Gate. Marshall’s Beach gets you even closer. 

 

Local restaurants

Fellow barracks-set building the Presidio Social Club is a good idea for brunch, if you like your bakery selection to include brioche beignets, brown-sugar cinnamon rolls and cheddar-and-bacon biscuits, and require an extensive cocktail list at 11am. Arguello is the Mexican restaurant at the Presidio Officers’ Club, where you can mainline all the tacos, taquitos and empanadas you can manage, alongside plancha-cooked pulpo. At Sociale in Presidio Heights, Italy influences the menu of burrata, tuna crudo, braised-duck pappardelle and pici bolognese. Down the street at Spruce, the inspiration comes from all over the world, with New York steak, Loch Duart salmon and Spanish octopus all on offer.

Local bars

Craft beers and craft cocktails await at Sessions on Letterman Drive in Presidio, as do salty snacks to soak it all up: wagyu meatballs, fried calamari and fish tacos. Happy hour here starts at 2.30pm: it’s our kind of place. 

Reviews

Photos Lodge at the Presidio reviews

Anonymous review

My memories of San Francisco consist of steep hills, shiny high-rises, and a gritty urban centre, so I’m delighted to discover, on my return, the peaceful green pocket of the Presidio. This 1,491-acre reservation at the city’s northern tip was a US military base from 1848 until 1989, then repurposed as a national park; the buildings, avenues and surrounding woodlands kept pretty much as they were. Although there have been some – not unwelcome – changes: the impressive row of red-brick military barracks on the park’s upper perimeter is now a cultural research library, a Walt Disney museum, and, most excitingly, my home for this trip: the Lodge at the Presidio hotel. 

So authentic is the setting that as I lug my suitcase up the path and across the wooden boards of the veranda it’s hard not to feel like I’ve been called up for service; arriving to be shown to my quarters and meet the rest of my regiment. Thankfully (both for me and any army, for I’m as disciplined as a raccoon) there will be nothing demanding about my stay.

Inside the hotel’s polished foyer, elegant armchairs invite one to sit and gaze out the windows at the Bay on one side, or the expansive Parade Lawn on the other. The Lodge staff, while always available to handle any queries or requests, have a 'there when you need them' approach, which actually makes the place feel even more like a residence. 

I’ve lucked out with my third-floor Deluxe Double room, which faces the Bay and offers a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from one of the two original windows – they’re narrow, but this frames the bridge nicely while blocking out the intrusive sight of the freeway below. (The sound of traffic is thankfully little more than a white-noise whisper.) There’s a luxurious simplicity to the room, all creams and blue-greys with dark wood and antique-gold details, subtle nods to the nautical in a ceiling lamp that looks a little like a port window, and a striped wool blanket folded with military precision at the foot of the bed. 

The bathroom is huge, with his ’n’ hers sinks and mirrors, and another door reveals a walk-in wardrobe, also home to a coffee-maker and a simple but considered minibar. Full-size bottles of Californian wines, minis of spirits, and craft beers from local Fort Point brewery accompany an enticing array of snacks. (It must be noted: for all the considered choices here, it does strike me as odd to be provided with those tiny pots of Coffee Mate creamer and wooden stirrers; although I’ve no doubt real milk would be provided if requested.) 

A long day of travelling and riding the BART and a taxi through ‘Frisco at rush hour has completely sapped me, so when I flop onto the bed and find I don’t bounce on the mattress, but rather melt into it, I feel a tad overcome. How can a mattress be both satisfyingly firm yet yieldingly soft? And how is one supposed to get up again and go do things? Maybe that’s the point. I don’t have to; I’ve no call of duty.

But I do finally peel myself away to explore the park. In a city hotel one normally emerges into the throng of the street, but being in the grounds of the Presidio is akin to living in an open-air museum. I take a walk along neat rows of identical cottages where middle-class officers and their families once lived, and stop to read about the history of the former bachelor officer’s quarters, where unmarried soldiers used to co-habit. ‘The bachelor officer leads a happy and enviable existence,’ explains the sign. ‘His quarters exhibit a singular medley of luxury and slouchiness, elegance and homey comfort.’ not unlike the Lodge at the Presidio.

While there is no restaurant or bar in the hotel (there are a couple of decent bistros within the extensive park if you don’t want to go far) guests are offered a welcome compromise with free wine and cheese every evening, to enjoy at their leisure. It’s the perfect social preamble before heading out for dinner; however, my own cheese platter and glass of red goes down very well after a day of plane food, and sends me into an easy slumber.

I’m awake before dawn. Not due to a drill sergeant yanking me out of bed to do press-ups – just jetlag, which, for all its curses, requires no action. I make a pot of coffee, slip back into the marshmallowy comfort of the bed and listen to the lulling foghorn out in the thick dark of the bay. I appreciate the quieter, slower pace this hotel offers; not to mention the green surrounds, water views, and a sight more ‘elegance and homey comfort’ than those officers were afforded. 

Breakfast, held in the dining room, is a Continental affair: hot and cold cereals, fresh fruits, good thick Greek yoghurt (none of those artificially flavoured pots ubiquitous in lesser hotel buffets), and an excellent selection of pastries from a local bakery. I consider whether cereal, fruit, yoghurt, and two buttery kouign-amanns is being greedy, but something has to get me and my untrained marching legs up and down the steep San Francisco streets. That’s if I can bring myself to leave the Presidio. 'Hup two, soldier', I think, and take another bite. 

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Price per night from $350.00