San Francisco Area at night (San Jose, Monterey: hotel, home, neighborhood)

[Douglas Dakota]

Hi,

I am going to fly to SFO next month for my first time and I am planning my trip right now. I have already read some texts about "what to see" ins this forum, thanks for that.

Now I have one little problem - my flight back goes at 6 A.M., what means that I will have to be at the airport at 5 A.M. or earlier. My hotel would be in the city of SFO, so I would have to leave it at round about 4 A.M. - in my opinion not really enough time to spend one more night in the hotel, because I come back from Monterey/Carmel at about 10-11 P.M.. So it's the question, what to do this 4-5 hours at night in the SFO-area.

I have a car from hertz until 6 A.M., so I ca drive around, but maybe this is boring after a while, and I do not know about the security situation.
I saw that some Walmarts or Safeway stores have openend 24h, is there any other mall or outletstore which has openend all night, so I can go for a little shopping trip?
What would you recommend?

Thank you.
Douglas Dakota

[iTsLiKeAnEgG]

Yeah, I happen to believe there’s nothing like being at a Wal-Mart or Safeway when it comes to enjoying SF's night life. I'm salivating just thinking about it.

[E14]

I would check out the nightlife in the neighborhood around eddy and taylor streets. There is always so much to do around there, and lots of nice and helpful people. Good luck!

[Puddy4LyF]

I had a similar problem. I had my car in the city (I live 45 min away) and had to take my friend to the airport at like 6am down in San Jose. We were in North Beach until 2am and I just didn't think it a good idea to drive all the way home just to sleep for an hour or two before driving all the way to San Jose. So instead, we found a pizza joint in North Beach near the corner of Columbus and Broadway which was open until 2AM. I then cruised over to the Palace of Fine Arts and slept for a few hours parallel parked in front of it lol

On another occasion, I caught an hour or so of sleep under the stars at Ocean Beach in the middle of the night when I didn't want to drive back home.

I sound like a homeless but anyway, it was better than adding all the additional driving. And there was nothing more relaxing than laying under the stars.

Good luck.