The Cloverdale Super 8 Hotel: A Review

Just a quick review of the hotel we stayed in last night on our way home from UCSF. It was a bit late in the day and the wife having already done a fair amount of driving earlier, we decided on trying the Super 8 in Cloverdale. She'd stayed there once previously. It was my first time although I'd noticed it across the street when we made our usual stop at the 7/11 on  South Cloverdale Blvd. It had me intrigued and I'd mentioned we should try it sometime.

Word of warning to start: the nightly rate I got on their web site site was considerably higher than what we paid just walking in and asking for a room. $156.79 vs. the $123.29 we ended up paying. Still a bit high for our standards but, since we were already there....

Nice place and I hope to stay there again. The only bad side for me was it being a hotel where doors to the rooms opened to the inside and you had to go through another locked door before you could even get to your room. The electronic room key cards made that an even bigger challenge until we figured the trick to using them: you put the car in the slot. Once the green light shows, you remove the card and open the door. We kept trying to turn the door knob by catching the green light for the split second it lit until we finally wised up.

On the up side, plenty of facilities within easy walking distance for most things you might need. A pizza place right across the drive way to the west.We didn't go in there but the wife did the night before with no complaints aside from the pizza being "pricey".

The hotel sits on the south side of a small mall with a supermarket (Rays?) within a few minutes walk to the north. To the north of that was a mexican restaurant, the name of which escapes me, but it seemed popular with the locals. The wife enjoyed it. I wasn't all that excited as being a chemo patient I don't have much interest in food. I ate it all, though, which is more than I can say for UCSF hospital food.

Also in the mall is a Subway sandwich place and CVS drug store among other things. It was nice to have all that within easy walking distance unlike the place we usually stay in San Rafael.

We got back to our room where I found it downright chilly- the air conditioners there having lots of ooomph, to their credit. A nice quiet room where I didn't feel cramped as I often do. Nice TV, microwave oven, coffee percolator and small refrigerator included.

The place also had a small pool, hot tub and exercise room. After a while we went out to check them out. The pool was on the smaller side with a hot tub just a few feet to the side. We hadn't figured out the key card technique so couldn't look inside the exercise room at that point. We did go in this morning as it was along the same path to the breakfast room. Just a couple treadmill units and one of those step things was all that was in there. I wasn't impressed but, having regularly stayed at a place with nothing close to even that, I wasn't complaining.

The breakfast room opens at 6:30am. Not the best. No hard boiled eggs as you find in most others but they did have bread and toasters where you could make your own along with those flavored packs of oatmeal and some standard cereals in a dispenser. Good enough for me since all I really wanted was coffee at the time.

Nice place and I look forward to staying there again, the main downside for UCSF business is the driving distance. Takes about two hours, but I figure we could easily do that if we have appoinments later in the day. After breakfast, we were back in our room at 8am. I thought at the time we could probably still get to UCSF on time if we had a 10am appointment, and that could be without even rushing ourselves.

Check it out the Super 8 next time you're around Cloverdale:

Addendum: Here's the Yelp reviews. I agree with most except complaints about the attitude of the management. They seemed nice enough to me. Not overly friendly but, then again, folks from "over there" usually aren't.