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The Cardinal Hotel

2.5 star property

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Photo gallery for The Cardinal Hotel

Interior
Designer store
Lobby sitting area
Business center
1 bedroom, Egyptian cotton sheets, premium bedding, down comforters

Reviews

9.0 out of 10
Wonderful

Popular amenities

  • Breakfast available
  • Housekeeping
  • 24/7 front desk
  • Free WiFi
$189
includes taxes & fees
Nov 14 - Nov 15

Explore the area

View in a map
235 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto, CA, 94301
  • Place, Stanford Shopping Center
    โ€ช6 min walkโ€ฌ
  • Place, Stanford University
    โ€ช2 min driveโ€ฌ
  • Place, Stanford University Medical Center
    โ€ช3 min driveโ€ฌ
  • Airport, San Jose, CA (SJC-Norman Y. Mineta San Jose Intl.)
    โ€ช22 min driveโ€ฌ

Room options

View all photos for Standard Room, 1 Queen Bed, Private Bathroom

1 bedroom, Egyptian cotton sheets, premium bedding, down comforters

Standard Room, 1 Queen Bed, Private Bathroom

8.4 out of 10
Very good
(12 reviews)
  • 250 sq ft
  • Sleeps 3
  • 1 Queen Bed

View all photos for Standard Room, 1 King Bed, Private Bathroom

1 bedroom, Egyptian cotton sheets, premium bedding, down comforters

Standard Room, 1 King Bed, Private Bathroom

7.2 out of 10
Good
(12 reviews)
  • 250 sq ft
  • Sleeps 3
  • 1 King Bed

View all photos for Standard Room, 2 Double Beds, Private Bathroom

Standard Room, 2 Double Beds, Private Bathroom | 1 bedroom, Egyptian cotton sheets, premium bedding, down comforters

Standard Room, 2 Double Beds, Private Bathroom

8.8 out of 10
Excellent
(6 reviews)
  • 250 sq ft
  • Sleeps 4
  • 2 Double Beds

View all photos for Deluxe Room, 1 King Bed, Private Bathroom, Corner

Deluxe Room, 1 King Bed, Private Bathroom, Corner | 1 bedroom, Egyptian cotton sheets, premium bedding, down comforters

Deluxe Room, 1 King Bed, Private Bathroom, Corner

8.4 out of 10
Very good
(5 reviews)
  • 260 sq ft
  • City view
  • Sleeps 3
  • 1 King Bed

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About this property

The Cardinal Hotel

Hotel in University South
This smoke-free hotel features a coffee shop/cafe, a 24-hour front desk, and express check-in. WiFi in public areas is free. Additionally, express check-out and a lobby fireplace are onsite.
The Cardinal Hotel offers 63 accommodations with laptop-compatible safes and complimentary bottled water. Pillowtop beds feature Egyptian cotton sheets, down comforters, and premium bedding. 42-inch LED televisions come with premium satellite channels.

Bathrooms include bathtubs or showers, bathrobes, slippers, and designer toiletries. Business-friendly amenities include desks and phones; free local calls are provided (restrictions may apply). Additionally, rooms include hair dryers and irons/ironing boards. Housekeeping is offered daily and hypo-allergenic bedding can be requested.

The hotel offers a coffee shop/cafe. Wireless Internet access is complimentary. This Palo Alto hotel also offers a fireplace in the lobby, express check-in, and express check-out.

The Cardinal Hotel is a smoke-free property.

Full breakfasts are available for a surcharge between 7:00 AM and 10:00 AM on weekdays.

Property amenities

Internet

  • Available in some public areas: Free WiFi

Parking and transportation

  • Offsite parking available (USD 15 per day)
  • Onsite parking options include a garage

Food and drink

  • Weekday full breakfast available 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM for a fee: USD 22 for adults and USD 22 for children
  • A coffee shop/cafe

Things to do

  • Art gallery

Family friendly

  • In-room crib

Conveniences

  • 24-hour front desk
  • Guidebooks
  • Luggage storage
  • Water dispenser

Guest services

  • Housekeeping (daily)

Accessibility

  • If you have requests for specific accessibility needs, please contact the property using the information on the reservation confirmation received after booking.
  • Assistive listening devices
  • Elevator
  • Visual fire alarm

More

  • 1 building
  • 3 floors
  • Built in 1924
  • Fireplace in lobby
  • Smoking not allowed
  • Traditional architecture

Room amenities

Bedroom

  • Down comforter
  • Egyptian cotton sheets
  • Free crib
  • Hypo-allergenic bedding
  • Pillowtop mattress

Bathroom

  • Bathrobes
  • Bathtub or shower
  • Designer toiletries
  • Hair dryer
  • Shampoo
  • Slippers
  • Soap
  • Toilet paper
  • Toothbrush and toothpaste (on request)
  • Towels provided

Entertainment

  • 42-inch LED TV with premium satellite channels

Food and drink

  • Free bottled water
  • Restaurant dining guides

More

  • Ceiling fan
  • Desk
  • Electrical adapters
  • Free local calls
  • Heating
  • Iron/ironing board
  • Laptop workspace
  • Laptop-compatible safe
  • Phone
  • Portable fan

Policies

Check-in

Check-in start time: 2:00 PM; Check-in end time: anytime
Contactless check-in available
Express check-in available

Check-out

Check-out before 11:00 AM
Contactless check-out available
Express check-out available

Special check-in instructions

An adult age 18 or older must assume all liability for the booking
Front desk staff will greet guests on arrival at the property

Access methods

Staffed front desk

Pets

Pets not allowed (service animals are welcome, and are exempt from fees)

Children and extra beds

Children are welcome
Rollaway/extra beds are available for USD 20.0 per day
Free cribs are available on request at the property

Property payment types

Important information

Optional extras

  • Fee for full breakfast: approximately USD 22 for adults and USD 22 for children
  • Nearby parking fee: USD 15 per day (39 ft away)
  • Rollaway bed fee: USD 20.0 per day

The above list may not be comprehensive. Fees and deposits may not include tax and are subject to change.

You need to know

Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on property policy
Government-issued photo identification and a credit card, debit card, or cash deposit may be required at check-in for incidental charges
Special requests are subject to availability upon check-in and may incur additional charges; special requests cannot be guaranteed
This property accepts credit cards and debit cards; cash is not accepted
This property reserves the right to pre-authorize the guest's credit card prior to arrival.
Cashless transactions are available
Safety features at this property include a carbon monoxide detector and a smoke detector

We should mention

Only registered guests are allowed in the guestrooms
This property welcomes guests of all sexual orientations and gender identities (LGBTQ+ friendly)

Property is also known as

The Cardinal Hotel Hotel
The Cardinal Hotel Palo Alto
The Cardinal Hotel Hotel Palo Alto

The Cardinal Hotel Reviews

Reviews

9.0

Wonderful

Rating 10 - Excellent. 227 out of 346 reviews
Rating 8 - Good. 65 out of 346 reviews
Rating 6 - Okay. 33 out of 346 reviews
Rating 4 - Poor. 12 out of 346 reviews
Rating 2 - Terrible. 9 out of 346 reviews

9.6/10

Cleanliness

9.4/10

Staff & service

8.4/10

Amenities

8.8/10

Property conditions & facilities

9.0/10

Eco-friendliness

Reviews

10/10 Excellent

Robert, MINNEAPOLIS

Stayed 4 nights in Jun 2025

4/10 Poor

Alexandra

Liked: Cleanliness
Disliked: Property conditions & facilities, room comfort
Stayed 1 night in Jul 2025

10/10 Excellent

Laura

Liked: Cleanliness, staff & service, property conditions & facilities, room comfort

Perfect Historic Hotel!

The only place we stay in Palo Alto! Perfect location, easy (free) parking curbside and walkable to restaurants, cocktails/wine bars, shopping, and historic Stanford Theater! Front desk staff is always friendly and helpful. Quiet and comfortable!
Stayed 1 night in Jun 2025

10/10 Excellent

Sally, Menlo Park

Stayed 1 night in Jun 2025

10/10 Excellent

Nathan

Liked: Cleanliness, amenities, property conditions & facilities
Would stay again.
Stayed 3 nights in Jun 2025

10/10 Excellent

Che

Stayed 1 night in Jun 2025

10/10 Excellent

Y

Traveled with family
Liked: Cleanliness, amenities, property conditions & facilities
Front desk ladies are super helpful and nice. Hotel rooms are clean, neat, and quiet. Historical evaluator is fun. Super close to restaurants and markets. Good stay!
Stayed 2 nights in Jun 2025

10/10 Excellent

Andrew

Liked: Cleanliness, property conditions & facilities
The hotel is 100 years old and very charming, with original tiles and features throughout. Much nicer than the usual bland hotel chains.
Stayed 2 nights in Jun 2025

10/10 Excellent

Linnea

Stayed 2 nights in Jun 2025

10/10 Excellent

Eugene

Stayed 1 night in Jun 2025

10/10 Excellent

Christina

Stayed 2 nights in Jun 2025

2/10 Terrible

Adam

Disliked: Cleanliness, property conditions & facilities
Incredibly upset and disappointed with the Cardinal Hotel. I was late to check in and was told I would have to share a washroom. Personally, the fact they are allowed to do that on Expedia is wrong. There shouldn't be 'college dorms' listed as hotels on Expedia.
Stayed 1 night in Jun 2025

6/10 Okay

busra

Stayed 2 nights in Feb 2025

10/10 Excellent

Teresita

Liked: Cleanliness, amenities, property conditions & facilities
Nice and clean bedroom, although the shared bathroom was clean all the time
Stayed 1 night in Jun 2025

4/10 Poor

Timo

Business traveler
Liked: Cleanliness, property conditions & facilities
Disliked: Room comfort
The noises around this hotel are unbearable. Because the windows are old and thin every little noise from the street come into your room. I had a 05.30AM wake up call from someone operating saw machine outside the hotel. The slamming litter bins are outside one side of the hotel and there is a ton of noise around the hotel in general. I only booked this because Sheraton PA was full. Never going back.
Stayed 1 night in Jun 2025

6/10 Okay

Stephen

Traveled with partner
Liked: Cleanliness
Good price. No A/C. Older property but clean.
Stayed 1 night in Jun 2025

10/10 Excellent

Joy

Liked: Cleanliness, staff & service, property conditions & facilities, room comfort
Charming vintage gem in Palo Alto. Our room was clean with a private bathroom. The staff was friendly and helpful. The location canโ€™t be beat with restaurants, boutiques, coffee shops and a short walk to Stanford University. Cardinal Hotel has character, history and a central location. We enjoyed our stay.
Stayed 1 night in Jun 2025

6/10 Okay

D Christian

Stayed 1 night in May 2025

10/10 Excellent

Victoria

Liked: Cleanliness, staff & service, property conditions & facilities, room comfort
The staff members are amazing! Super cozy and clean
Stayed 3 nights in May 2025

10/10 Excellent

Jagdeep Singh

Business traveler
Liked: Cleanliness, staff & service, amenities, property conditions & facilities
Thanks for the great stay!
Stayed 3 nights in May 2025

8/10 Good

Seung Eun

Liked: Cleanliness, staff & service, property conditions & facilities, room comfort

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๊ณต์šฉ์š•์‹ค๋กœ ๋œ ๋ฐฉ์„ ์˜ˆ์•ฝํ•ด์„œ ๊ฑฑ์ •ํ–ˆ๋Š”๋ฐ, ๊ณต์šฉ์š•์‹ค์ด๋‚˜ ๊ณต์šฉ์ƒค์›Œ์‹ค์„ ์‚ฌ์šฉํ•  ๋•Œ ๋‹ค๋ฅธ ์‚ฌ๋žŒ ๋•Œ๋ฌธ์— ๊ธฐ๋‹ค๋ ค๋ณธ์ ์ด ์—†์–ด ํŽธ๋ฆฌํ–ˆ๊ณ  ๊ด€๋ฆฌ๋„ ๊ต‰์žฅํžˆ ๊นจ๋—ํ•˜๊ฒŒ ์ž˜๋˜์–ด ์žˆ์—ˆ๋‹ค. 1์ธต์—์„œ ๋”ฐ๋œปํ•œ ๋ฌผ์„ ์ปต์— ๋‹ด์•„์˜ฌ ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ๋Š” ์ ๋„ ์ข‹์•˜๋‹ค. ๋‹ค๋งŒ ๊ณต์šฉ์ƒค์›Œ์‹ค์˜ ์ˆ˜์••์ด ๋‚ด ๊ธฐ์ค€์œผ๋ก  ๋„ˆ๋ฌด ๋‚ฎ์•„์„œ ์ƒค์›Œํ•˜๋Š”๋ฐ ์˜ค๋ž˜๊ฑธ๋ฆฐ ์ ์ด ๊ฐ€์žฅ ๋ถˆํŽธํ–ˆ๊ณ , ์ด๋ฏธ ์•Œ๊ณ  ์˜ˆ์•ฝํ•˜๊ธด ํ–ˆ์œผ๋‚˜, ๊ฐœ์ธ ๋ฐฉ์— ๋ƒ‰์žฅ๊ณ ๊ฐ€ ์—†๋Š” ์ ์ด ์•„์‰ฝ๊ธด ํ–ˆ๋‹ค.
Stayed 1 night in May 2025

10/10 Excellent

Edgar

Liked: Cleanliness, staff & service, property conditions & facilities, room comfort
Stayed 1 night in May 2025

10/10 Excellent

Verified traveler

Worth the experience

Great place to stay, but lots of noise in the morning from streets
Stayed 1 night in Apr 2025

10/10 Excellent

Yanhua

Business traveler, Traveled with family
Liked: Cleanliness, staff & service, amenities, property conditions & facilities
Quiet, convenient for shopping and transportation.
Stayed 3 nights in Apr 2025

10/10 Excellent

Derek

Liked: Amenities
Stayed 2 nights in Apr 2025