Seen in San Francisco from the Inside Out
FTC Disclosure: This trip was hosted by the marketing agency representing DREAME. Flights, ground transportation, accommodations, and meals were provided at no cost to me. As always, all opinions are my own.
Some cities deserve to be seen for the first time through the right person’s eyes. San Francisco, I decided, was one of those places. Those eyes weren’t mine, but I didn’t know it yet.
And it’s not because I didn’t want to be there. I did. I’d watched Inside Out 1 and 2 in preparation for the trip. Half research, half reverence for a city that inspired a studio capable of making a film about the interior life of a child so precisely that my daughter, who has carried around anxiety like Linus with his blue blanket since the pandemic, bought the Anxiety doll the moment it was available. I’d wanted to walk to the end of Lombard Street. Find the pizza place out here ruining pizza with broccoli. Get close enough to the Golden Gate Bridge to pretend I was going to walk across … before coming to my senses.
But first, there was the matter of where I was staying.
The marketing agency that flew me out to cover the DREAME product launch also handled my accommodations. I was grateful, genuinely. And then I saw the word.
Motel.
Oh no. I don’t do motels.
The internal negotiation that followed was swift and slightly irrational. Maybe this trip isn’t for me. Is it too late to cancel? Should I just book my own room somewhere? The reviews aren’t horrible. And Disney has motels. Disney. If it’s good enough for the Mickey Mouse … but I’ve also only stayed in deluxe resorts.
Not because I’m a snob. Because I don’t like feeling like you can walk straight from your car to my door. It’s a safety thing, and I was feeling Fear.
I’d also heard things about San Francisco. The large unhoused population defecating on the sidewalks. The way certain neighborhoods could feel unsafe, unpredictable, too close to a reality that’s easy to read about from a distance and harder to navigate up close. A motel, I reasoned, meant a parking lot for a front yard. A door that opened directly onto whatever was outside it. No hallway buffer. No distance.
Despite this, I packed my bags, saved my boarding pass to my Apple Wallet, and replaced Anxiety with Joy. There’s a first time for everything.
The Arrival
The La Luna Inn looks exactly like its pictures. I want to be honest about that. I’m also not saying this is a bad thing. What I will say is La Luna Inn is part of the Ascend Hotel Collection for Choice Hotels. The website describes it as “an upscale global network of Independent, boutique, and historic hotels.”
From the outside, it’s modest. A little dated despite a recent renovation. Not exactly the kind of place where one minute you’re in your room and the next you’re standing in the parking lot, because there are hallways. Some a little more privacy-providing than others – luckily, I had one of those, but more on that later.
Pulling up in my Lyft, I took it in and made my peace with it. I was here. I was doing this with Fear.
The office was quaint. Small but considered. Modern touches where it counted. A coffee station on the counter that said someone had thought about the morning you’d be having before you’d even had it.
And a typed sign with the words, “Be back in 15 minutes.”
I will admit, I stood there and did the math that every traveler does in that moment. Is it actually going to be fifteen minutes? Is it going to be forty-five? How many minutes have already gone by? Am I going to be standing here long enough to question every decision that led me to this lobby?
I waited two minutes.
A lovely gentleman stepped out from the back, unhurried but present, and the check-in that followed was one of the quietest displays of hospitality that brought me the peace I’d been hoping for.
He took my last name. Asked for identification. Let me know the room had already been handled, that he just needed a card for incidentals. Standard enough. But then, when we were finished, he stepped around the counter, key packet in hand, and pointed to the room number printed at the top.
He didn’t say it out loud; he pointed and whispered.
It was just the three of us in that office. Him, his colleague, and me, and he still didn’t say it out loud. He pointed, the way someone does when they understand that your safety and your privacy are the same thing. I noticed. This is something I always notice.
He walked me through how to find my room, mentioned the elevator just outside the door, and sent me on my way.
The elevator opened onto the second floor, and I followed the numbers down the hall until I found mine, which happened to be one door away. The window, I discovered almost immediately, didn’t face the hallway like the others. It faced out toward a private space. A gap between buildings. A quiet patch of La Luna Inn that nobody else had access to.
I thought briefly about whether I could open it and use the ledge as a balcony.
I decided that would probably be frowned upon, so I looked around before whipping out my Clorox wipes, my Lysol spray, and getting to work cleaning the surfaces I know get overlooked.
Normally, I don’t unpack. This time, I switched it up.
The Room
There’s a thing I do when I travel. I live out of my suitcase.
I’ve wanted to be more intentional about making the space my own, and this felt as good a time as any to start. So, clothes came out and went where they belong. Toiletries found their place on the bathroom counter. The chargers claimed their outlets. House shoes by the bed. Flip flops by the shower. The suitcase, once emptied, got tucked between the wall and the clothing area. It takes maybe fifteen minutes, but it changes everything about how the space felt. It became the place I lived … at least for the week.
The La Luna Inn gave me more to work with than I expected.
The reviews warned me. No full-length mirror. No lights beyond the one by the door. No outlets worth mentioning. Let the record show … every single one of those things was wrong, at least for my room. Both nightstands had lamps. Outlets could be found on the walls. Every wall. Some, with two, and a nightstand charging port with both USB and USB-C. Someone understood that people travel with more than one thing that needs power, which is great considering I’d forgotten my power strip at home.
The floors were hardwood, which I always appreciate, even when I’m going to put house shoes on immediately. A mini refrigerator hummed quietly beside the desk. The heating and cooling unit was large and loud in the way units like that always are, but it settled into a steady white noise that blocked out the world and allowed for really peaceful sleep despite Lombard Street being right outside my window.
The room was minimalist in a way that felt intentional rather than sparse. A bed. A desk. A desk chair. A small space for clothes where a closet might have been. No luggage rack, but the desktop worked fine. No iron or steamer, but I’d planned ahead with my travel-sized Downy Wrinkle Release Spray. A must because preparation is its own form of hospitality that you extend to yourself.
There was one “complaint”, and I’m using the word loosely.
The toilet seat was tiny. Genuinely, concerningly small. I’m not working with much back there, and even what I had was hanging on for dear life.
I’d unpacked. I’d arranged. I’d put things where they belonged and stepped back and looked at a room that, twenty minutes earlier, had been a stranger’s space and was now, undeniably, mine.
I didn’t expect to feel at home. I did anyway.
The Neighborhood
The Marina District in the early evening is the kind of neighborhood that makes you feel like you’ve accidentally wandered into the best part of someone else’s life. People everywhere, but not in the overwhelming way of a crowded city block. In the warm, unhurried way of people who have nowhere more important to be. Friends at outdoor tables. Families walking slowly. The kind of collective ease that only happens when a neighborhood, and its inhabitants, actually like itself. Enough to keep it clean. Presentable. You know, in that way you always tidy up before company comes over.
I had my phone and a mission. “Good food near me” is my most reliable travel search, and it led me, as it often does, somewhere I wouldn’t have found on my own.
Blackwood Restaurant & Cafe. 4.4 out of 5. Known for brunch, apparently, but I am a woman who knows what she wants, and what I wanted was Pad See Ew. At least that’s what I wanted when I saw Blackwood had Thai-inspired dishes on the menu.
The reviews mentioned “service issues”. I can’t speak to what a full dining experience might have been like, because I was there for takeout, but the gentleman who received me at the door did so with a warm welcome, and he didn’t side-eye me when I’d stepped back in to photograph the flowers adorning the walls, despite my having already stepped out.
I left with the Chicken Pad See Ew, which was the exact comfort food I needed after a day of airports, a five-hour flight into the past, and Lyfts into the unknown. Uncle “Tai” for dessert, which was a Mango Sticky Rice that I am still thinking about, which tells you everything you need to know about it. I should note that this dish was listed as “seasonal” on the menu, so don’t get your hopes up too high if you’re dining in autumn or winter.
I’d ordered a bottle of still water that turned out, upon returning to my room, to be San Pellegrino. I am a Sparkling Saratoga Springs kind of woman, so unflavored San Pellegrino, however lovely, was not going to work for me.
I left it on the desk with the tip for the room attendant at check-out. It felt like the right thing to do, and I certainly loved when guests left me surprise water and treats as a room attendant.
Back in the present, dinner was eaten in bed, which is its own category of comfort that I will defend to anyone. My Pad See Ew was perfect. My Mango Sticky Rice was exquisite. No, seriously, it was truly that good. Somewhere in the back of my mind, an Art Appreciation project and a French exam were patiently waiting for my attention, but instead, I gave it to the messiness of Summer House.
I did, eventually, get to both. An A on the project. An A on the exam. An A in both classes, the spring semester having just wrapped as I write this. San Francisco, it turns out, is good for the mind even when you’re technically procrastinating.
The Turn
At some point during that first evening, somewhere between the Mango Sticky Rice and the familiar comfort of Bravo reality television, I realized something had shifted.
I wasn’t nervous anymore.
Not about the motel. Not about the neighborhood. Not about being alone in an unfamiliar city where I didn’t know a single person, not even at the event I’d come to cover. Fear, which I’d carried with me from the moment I saw the word “motel” in my confirmation email, had quietly dissolved.
I thought about the people I’d passed on my walk to Blackwood. The ease of them. The way the Marina District held its residents and visitors with equal warmth, the way a good neighborhood does. Not by being perfect, but by being present.
I thought about what I’d expected and what I’d found. How the vast distance was likely equivalent to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge.
San Francisco had been prepared for me to be afraid of it. I’d done my part, arriving with my assumptions intact, my guard appropriately raised, my Disney motel rationalization filled with cracks, and San Francisco simply declined to be what I’d expected. It had been warm instead. Walkable. The kind of place where the evening air feels like an invitation rather than a warning, where you can walk alone at dusk and feel not vulnerable but free. The kind of place where Sadness eases out of the way, so you can feel Joy.
I could picture myself here. Visiting, maybe even living. At least for a while. Walking these blocks in the morning while I have my daily 7 am call with my daughter. Knowing which restaurant to recommend to a friend passing through. Having a favorite corner. Becoming a part of a neighborhood that already appeared to have its arms wide open.
With all that, it still felt like something was missing.
As I said, I’d watched both Inside Out movies in preparation for this trip. Two films based in this city, by a studio just on the outskirts of it, about the complicated interior life of a growing child. About Joy and Sadness existing not in opposition but in conversation. About the emotions we carry and can’t always name. About the bittersweet math of growing up.
My daughter, who works four on-campus jobs at the Rhode Island School of Design to fund her “Art of…” book collection, who bought the Anxiety doll the moment it existed because she related so strongly to it … she would love this city in a way I’m not sure I’m equipped to fully access alone.
The Close
I’ve been thinking about what made La Luna Inn feel so special.
It wasn’t the thread count or the square footage. It wasn’t the star rating or the neighborhood reputation. It certainly wasn’t the word that appeared in the confirmation email that briefly sent me straight into Anxiety’s arms. It wasn’t the price point or the proximity to the things I’d planned to see but never quite got to.
It was the Guest Services gentleman pointing instead of speaking my room number aloud. It was him placing me in a room where the window faced somewhere private. The two-minute wait instead of the several I’d been preparing myself for. The HVAC that became a sound machine in what could have otherwise been a really loud sleeping situation. The comforting meal in bed that was gone too quickly. The room that provided just enough.
It was the moment I pulled the covers up on my last night, in a room I was originally afraid to stay in, and realized Sadness had returned because it was time to leave.
Despite it being an Ascend Collection, the La Luna Inn is not a luxury property. It likely will not appear on a list of San Francisco’s finest accommodations. It has a tiny toilet seat that I have opinions about and the outside world just on the other side of your door. But it also had given me, without trying to, exactly what I needed.
That’s hospitality. Not the performance of it. Not the amenities checklist or the loyalty points. The real thing. The verb. The act of a very sweet gentleman deciding in the moment that my comfort and ease were worth a little thought.
So, no, I didn’t get to Lombard Street’s famous curves. I didn’t ride a cable car, or stand close enough to the Golden Gate Bridge to feel it. I didn’t make it to the pizza place that inspired the one in the movie.
Some moments are just practice runs for the person you’re going to bring next time because I’m definitely going back, and I’m bringing my daughter with me. While Anxiety may be tagging along with us, there will definitely be Joy.
Chances are, we’ll be staying at La Luna Inn.
