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Drone Views from the Claremont Club & Spa, a Fairmont Hotel

The Claremont Club & Spa, a Fairmont Hotel, sits in the hills of Berkeley overlooking San Francisco and its famous bay.

First opened in 1915, the 23-acre luxury resort offers a full range of leisure activities along with a large spa, sports club and multiple dining options. While visiting the Claremont, I had a chance to fly my drone and capture some amazing views from 300 feet in the air. This video shows the historic main building and surrounding tennis courts and recreation areas, then shows the sweeping views of San Francisco Bay with the city skyline just barely visible through the area’s legendary fog. The camera pans around to show the surrounding hillside neighborhood and how the hotel is nestled in a canyon.

I spent a wonderful weekend in one of the Claremont Club & Spa’s junior suites in their tower. This provided windows on three walls with those epic views of the bay and the city beyond. I’ll be posting a video tour of my room and also the hotel’s Presidential Suite here on the Business Traveler website in the next week.

To get to the hotel in style, I drove the 2018 Lexus GX 460. The luxury SUV was perfect for the 500 mile drive up from Los Angeles. This was the Luxury trim level and was filled with every driver aid and assistance technology available. It also had three rows of seats, for seven people. The Lexus was also comfortable for sitting in traffic, which I did a lot of.

The Claremont is only about ten miles from downtown San Francisco but I found the traffic, especially getting to (on both sides) the Bay Bridge, unbearable. It took me two hours to get from the hotel to Union Square on a Saturday afternoon, a 12.5 mile trip that would take about 20 minutes at 2 a.m. If you drive, get a FasTrak toll device, there were FasTrak express lanes on the bridge access area that would have saved me a lot of time.

Photo by Freddy Sherman

By Freddy Sherman

Freddy is a regular contributor to Business Traveler across all print, digital, web and social channels.  To follow Freddy directly, you can find more of his content at luxuryfred.com and here:

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