Holiday Inn Express Mill Valley San Francisco Area by IHG

easy check-in with friendly staff easy parking and convenient location

breakfast was ok, but that's okay because many nice restaurants close by

I always stay in Holiday Inn that offers complimentary breakfast and that is why I chosen this hotel. We stayed there due to visiting Muir Woods NP in the late morning and like to visit Sausalito in the evening or next day. We found out belatedly that the hotel offer free bike rental and there are a trail that one can bike or jog/walk. Anyway, decent hotel and spacious room which is standard of any Holiday Inn and highly recommended if you are visiting Muir Woods NP, take your time to enjoy there and then, visit nearby Sausalito in the evening or early next morning before heading north to Sonoma or South to San Francisco.

Location, location, location! Nice view

Repeated problems with magnetic strip style room keys. Never enough coat hooks, especially with it raining for the duration of our stay

This Holiday Inn Express is a very mixed bag. First, the pros: - Very clean, nice furnishings - Reasonable price for this very expensive area - Convenient location that appeared safe—short walk (9 mins.) to a couple of restaurants and a strip mall with a Walgreens, as well as to a path along the bay (though that path is adjacent to the 101 freeway) - Friendly check-in staff Now, the cons: - There are warnings in the parking lot (see photo) that the area is prone to flooding and that the hotel won't be responsible for damages, so you'll want to check the high tide levels when you're there - Our room had sandbags all along the patio, presumably to mitigate any flooding - The sliding glass door leading to the patio was not secure in its tracks and was "locked" with a flimsy chain lock—anyone could have broken in easily - At least two of the electrical outlets in the room that you might use for charging a phone were dead - The TV had some glitches to it, sometimes working, sometimes not - The water pressure was extremely poor—basically close to a trickle in the sink (we didn't use the shower, but I'm guessing that would have been unusable, given what we saw with the sink) - The next morning, after just using the sink to brush our teeth and not having any toilet issues that might have caused it, the bathroom floor had a huge (approx. 2 feet in diameter, and it may have continued to expand after we checked out) puddle of water; I tried to see where it was coming from (presumably the sink or toilet) but couldn't tell and wasn't about to get down on my hands and knees to investigate - When we reported the flooding upon checkout, the clerk (a different person from the check-in clerk) was unfriendly and questioned us as if it were a problem we had caused In sum, if you want a clean, nicely furnished but problematic room that's not hugely expensive for the area, this will do, but I wouldn't stay there for more than one night. Your car might be safer in the front if there's flooding from high tides, too, though I don't know if that would make a difference. And maybe don't stay in a ground-floor room, especially with the flooding, sandbags, etc.