The Mark Hopkins is one of the great hotel buildings of San Francisco, currently being milked by Intercontinental. The physical structure is in prime shape, with five star rooms and six star suites, but all the services are weak to poor. They closed the only restaurant a few years ago and converted it to a "club," to which you can gain access for around $60 a day extra. They serve a "continental breakfast plus" in there, with half the selection of the free breakfast at a Holiday Inn Express. (No, I'm not exaggerating.) They do convert the bar upstairs into a restaurant for breakfast buffet at the princely sum of $25 a person, offering nothing in the way of eggs except one of those silver bins of scrambled eggs cooked, in this case, 20 stories below in the kitchen of the defunct restaurant. (Think the limited service at the buffet was bad? They will tack on a 15% tip anyway: When they negotiated their contract with the waiters union, they negotiated away your right to set your own tip percentage.)
Of course, there's room service, but that is only during limited hours around breakfast and dinner. They've closed down all room service during the night and most of the day. You will be staying at a five-star bed and breakfast.
The Internet access is expensive and severely limited. The advertized wireless speed is 56 times slower than what we have at home, and the higher-priced ethernet speed is 14 times slower. That's the advertized speed. The speed I measured was even slower than that. All this for only $14 to $16 a day, or around $450 a month. Again, compare this to Holiday Inn Express's rate of $0 per month.
The speed of the Internet fairly wizzes compared to the water. They have installed those ultra-low-flow fixtures that mainly pump out air + noise, rather than, as in the old days, water. I stopwatched the filling of the bathroom sink: It literally took 4 minutes and 13 seconds to fill to the overflow line. The shower is just as bad.
Location, of course, is key, and if you carry mountain-goat genes, you will love it! It is atop one of San Francisco's seven hills with the only public transportation being the cable car. Cable cars, of course, are delightful, but depending on them for regular transportation can be ruinous at $5.00 per person each way.
There are plenty of great hotels on the flat parts of San Francisco, including at least two hotels with as great or greater history as the Mark Hopkins. Check out the St. Francis, right on Union Square and truly elegant, and the grand old Palace Hotel, whose history goes back into the 1800s. Be aware, though, that the Palace Hotel is also now in the clutches of Intercontinental. It would be best to call first and find out if room service extends beyond narrow time windows, and you may need to bring your own water.
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