Originally Posted by
jasonvr
Lots going on in this post. I'm assuming that you are leaving for the airport the next morning during rush hour, not evening rush.
If you're going out of SJC, stay in MV or somewhere in that area. There's also a Centric in Santa Clara which will likely be cheaper and closer to SJC. Also an HR in Santa Clara. You're not going to miss anything by not staying in MV. The hotel is essentially in a group of office buildings and near a strip mall.
If you're going out of SFO, stay closer than MV. It's quite a hike up to SFO even if you take the back road (280) and 101 could be terrible, or be fine. I have no idea what traffic patterns up there are like now, so I can't tell if that's with or against traffic anymore (I used to frequently fly into SFO in the morning and would avoid 101 southbound because it was packed, so maybe northbound would be against....). If you're going to go out of SFO though, why not stay at the GH at SFO which is directly on the AirTrain line. No worries about getting to your flight or traffic. Or even the HR SFO which is quite close as well.
No experience with the Westin Palo Alto as comparison.
I agree, GH SFO if you’re spending 20k pts as it’s an actually nice hotel. Honestly South Bay has nothing to see unless you want to walk around Stanford (which is really nice to visit), which you can do then zip back to your hotel. Westin Palo Alto is just okay, pretty dated. South Bay (and SF to an extent) is severely lacking in nice hotels.