Hello all. I am on spring break, and I am on vacation in San Francisco all this week, staying with family. I visited Monterrey today, but I hope to spend the rest of the week in San Francisco exploring. Please share your suggestions for what I should do in and around the city.
I will be spending a little time in Berkeley, and I will be seeing the Sharks play the Avalanche in San Jose on Wednesday. Other than that my schedule is wide open. I know that I must eat good sushi, and I hope to see Golden Gate Park, Chinatown, and the Exploratorium. Though I have access to a car, I would prefer not to drive, and I’m comfortable taking any public transportation. I’m looking for suggestions on museums, culture, restaurants, offbeat attractions, whatever you’ve got.
My trip is in your hands! Thank you in advance for any suggestions.
If you’re an Andy Goldsworthy fan, you could take a walking tour of the Presidioto check out three or four of his “installations”. The Walt Disney Family Museum is right there in the heart of the Presidio as well. For some great burritos/tacos/quesadillas, etc. take BART to 24th and Mission.
Filbert Street steps
While you’re there, get some black sign painter’s enamel and carefully add a colon after the word “Caution” on the sign at the base.
I never remembered to do it and it begs: CAUTION
PEDESTRIANS SLIPPERY
WHEN WET
The old Mt. Tam artillery emplacement is worth finding.
A search of this forum for “San Francisco” will find at least a few of the “What to do in San Francisco” threads - they come by at least once a year, and the town doesn’t change that quickly.
Rent a bike and ride it from the Embarcadero to Ft Mason on a Friday night for Off The Grid, a really awesome food truck convergence at the beach. It’s a beautiful bike ride that takes you from the financial center around the waterfront, in front of the piers, past Fisherman’s Wharf (which is actually quite nice if you don’t spend too long there), and into a beautiful view of the golden gate bridge.
Head out to Ocean Beach and hike around Land’s End for a minute. It’s a bathhouse that burned down in the 1900s on a beautiful stretch of oceanfront, and looks like a roman ruin.
The exploratorium is pretty OK, but so full of kids as to not be very fun. If you want to play with anything, you’ll be making a small kid wait behind you. I feel kind of guilty about that, but ymmv. A better idea is to visit the Academy of Sciences on a Thursday night, when it becomes adults only and turns into the coolest bar in SF. This is the best place to meet people and a popular date spot. It’s in Golden Gate Park, so I suggest making a day out of it and be sure to visit the buffalo.
Another idea for Thursday is Tourette’s Without Regrets, an underground burlesque/variety/slam poetry/rap battle amalgam of debauchery in Oakland. It has to be experienced to fully understand it.
Then there’s Hoodslam, which happens on Friday nights in the same building as Tourette’s.
Definitely get a burrito in the mission. It doesn’t really matter where, they’re all great and everyone has a favorite. The “classic” is el farolito, which is fantastic, but you can’t have a bad burrito in the mission. It’s not possible.
Chinatown is OK. The inner richmond is actually a much better experience if you want to see how local chinese people live. Chinatown is still very ethnically Chinese, but overrun with cheap tourist crap.
There are some bike places in North Beach that will rent you a bike + gear, then you can ride along the shore and over the Golden Gate Bride, into Sausalito, and take the ferry back to SF. I did this with a group a couple months ago and it was awesome.
The Asian Art Museum is very good, and is easily reachable by public transit.
Musée Mécanique is a collection of antique penny arcade machines near Fisherman’s Wharf. Admission is free, although you need coins to operate the machines.
The Cartoon Art Museum is another interesting, offbeat attraction you might enjoy.
If you like Mexican food you should go to a taqueria in the Mission District. La Taqueria is one of the best. Again, this is easily reachable by public transit.
The Giants play at home on Thursday and Friday nights at the best stadium in all of baseball - a must-see if you’re a fan. No other stadium is better, although PNC Park comes close. Try StubHub.com for tickets, hopefully the prices are reasonable.
If the weather is good, and it looks like it is this week, take the Powell and Hyde cable car north towards The Cannery. The views when going down the Hyde Street hill are great. But you can do well just driving it too.
The cable cars are basically just a Disney type ride that takes you from one point to the museum and back. Not really a transportation.
Alcatraz: It can be hard to get on a tour since seats are limited.
I for one, being from Kansas, just found it fascinating to look at the ocean and the boats. I stood on the dock and washed the fishermen at work. Never seen that before.
I highly recommend walking across the Golden Gate Bridge and back. The views from the bridge, and the bridge itself, are remarkable. But dress warmly; it can get really cold and windy. I suspect some of the “suicides” are actually people who were blown off.
Unless you like bad food and e-coli, stay away from Fisherman’s Wharf. I’ll second the Asian Art Museum. You might try Zazie’s Restaurant, which is pretty good. Have a canoli and coffee at Stella Bakery.
Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions so far. I’m out the door to try and do all of them. I’d love to hear any more of your suggestions, since I’ll be here through Saturday.
P.S. In my travels around the Bay Area these past three days, I remarked to my sister that the mountains are beautiful. She said they aren’t mountains, they’re hills. Hey, I’m from Chicago, they look like mountains to me!
The Palace Hotel. Lunch at Maxfield’s bar, the bar itself, and stare at the original The Pied Piper and try to count all the children. If you are with someone else, the same Hotel has the Garden Court. Very romantic. Cable cars! The Pacific Sock Exchange. UC Tenderloin. The Haight. Market Street old street cars.
When you see the Golden Gate Bridge you should consider going to Fort Point, an civil-war era brick fort under the San Francisco end of the bridge. The history and architecture of the place are very interesting, and there are some great views from there.
BTW, there are mountains in the Bay Area. Mt. Tamalpais is a mountain, as are Mt. Hamilton and Mt. Diablo.