San Francisco

Check out Luke’s awesome SF Tourist Stuff page.

Sightseeing: The Basics

  • Golden Gate Bridge: fantastic views of the city in one direction and the hills in the other. Bring layers; it can be surprisingly cold! You can walk or bike it.
    • Our favorite hike in that area: Lands End.
  • Alcatraz: Definitely touristy, but hey, maybe you’re a tourist.
    • Take a scenic ferry ride from Fisherman’s Wharf to the island. Get the audio cellhouse tour, narrated by former inmates and guards, which offers harrowing accounts of prison riots and escape attempts. Tours sail daily from Pier 33, 8:45am–3:50pm. March–Nov. Night tour leaves late afternoon. Takes 2-3hrs. Bring layers. Reserve in advance.
  • Cable cars. One of two moving National Historic Landmarks; hop aboard for a 9-mph rolling tour of the city. You can hang off the running boards. Check out the Cable Car Museum at Mason and Washington (1201 Mason St, 415-474-1887). $7/ride.
  • Golden Gate Park. Japanese Tea Garden, Botanical Garden, Strybing Arboretum. There is a lovely AIDS memorial area too. Walk/bike/drive through this place at some point if you can! Don’t miss the buffalo (in The Paddock).
  • Chinatown & North Beach
    • Ah, the global juxtaposition of Chinese and Italian immigrants again!
    • Chinatown: Enter on Grant Avenue near Bush Street through the ornate Chinatown Gate. Browse the souvenir stops along Grant Avenue. Head to Stockton Street, where residents shop for ginseng and herbal remedies, dried fish parts and delicacies such as live quail and water eels. Visit pre-20th century Chinatown at the Tien Hau Temple (125 Waverly Pl) on the Street of Painted Balconies. Don’t miss the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory (56 Ross Alley): 20,000 fortune cookies are folded by hand daily as they come off an ancient-looking cookie conveyor belt.
    • Dip into City Lights, the bookstore of the Beat Poets and sister store to Shakespeare & Co. in Paris.
    • North Beach / Grant Street is a reasonably cute area that’s fun to walk around.
    • Coit Tower — if you’re in the area, it’s a nice view of the city.
  • SF Ferry Building & Marketplace – nice for a stroll
  • IF YOU MUST
    • Pier 39 is the tourist anti-mecca. N&N avoid this area, but the sea lion colony is cute and it may be the way to your ferry.
    • Ghirardelli Square is equally touristy, but it is actually quite fun to stop by the Buena Vista cafe for an Irish coffee.
    • Union Square, shopping malls, blah blah.
  • Culture
    • Exploratorium. Now right on the water!
    • Museums: Museum of Modern Art; Asian Art Museum;
    • Theatre: Watch a Broadway show
    • Take in a symphony concert at Davies Hall

Anti-Sightseeing: The Neighborhoods

If you have time and want to get a real sense of San Francisco, you really want to wander the neighborhoods. Here is a very short list of places to explore, highly biased by stuff N&N like to do.

The Mission

Walk around Valencia St. between 14th and 24th—roughly from Four Barrel to Ritual, two of our most frequented cafes. Don’t miss 821 Valencia or Paxton Gate (both the toy shop and the curiosity shop). Gaze upon the cases of glory at Craftsman and Wolves; have a thick hot chocolate there if you dare, and DEFINITELY GET The Rebel Within. Oh, you like chocolate? Step into Dandelion and graze upon the nibs. Hungry? We like Pica Pica, but there are too many places within a stone’s throw to leave it at that. The world stands in line to get into Tartine (and that banana cream deliciousness is worth it); and then again at Bi-Rite for the Best Ice Cream Ever. If you time it right, you can eat at Namu Gaji right before that too.

Lower Haight

 

 

Glen Park

See, we live here, so we may be biased. It’s not going to be the first place you head from the airport. But actually it might be, since it’s conveniently RIGHT along the way, and its convenient combination of BART station and tech-bus-stop made it an unbeatable choice for the NN-est. Though small, the ‘hood features lovely little Caffe Bello, the terrific Canyon Market, a fantastic little bookstore (Bird & Beckett, which even has jazz concerts on Fri/Sat/Sun evenings) and several other cute stores up along Chenery. Its French bistro is up to snuff (“C’est comme Paris!” “NON!! C’EST PARIS!!”), as is our go-to taqueria (La Corneta), our go-to Thai place (Osha) our go-to Italian (Gialina) and our go-to sushi place (Tataki). There’s so much to go to here! Nature option: Glen Park Canyon is a lovely stroll that gets more and more interesting as you go deeper into the canyon. It’s hard to believe you’re (almost) in the middle of a city.

Activities great for kids

  • Calacademy.org: The world’s only aquarium, planetarium, rainforest and natural history museum—all under one living roof!
  • Exploratorium @ Pier 15
  • Aquariumofthebay.org – at Pier 39
  • Rollerskating @ Church of 8 Wheels- a former Catholic church, now modern-day roller disco. The Holy Rollers, a groovy, costume-wearing group of regulars, twirl beneath the mirror ball. Open skates: the gay-frequented Rainbow Night on Tuesdays, old-school funk on Wednesdays, date night on Thursdays, and Black Rock (Burner night) on Saturdays. 554 Fillmore St. Tu-Th 7-10, Sat 3-5:30, 7-11, $10+$5 for skates

Tours

  • Attpark.com/tours for a tour of the home of the SF Giants.
  • Detour: a mesmerizing audio walk, via smartphone app. Pick from 7 offbeat topics, including Fisherman’s Wharf as seen through the eyes of fishermen, and a satirical romp through the bakeries of the Marina District with absurdist German philosopher and “former Rhineland liver farmer” Ulrich Fürst. Tours $5, detour.com.
  • Art: Murals on walls and back alleys in the Mission District. Guided mural walks on weekends. precitaeyes.org/tours.html.
  • Food: hip neighborhoods, of-the-moment edibles (like salted caramel ice cream, artisan salumi, fresh-baked breads), chocolate. Plenty of samples, neighborhood history, meet-and-greets with chefs, cheesemongers, bakers and chocolatiers. 3hrs/tour, $55–$85, gourmetwalks.com.
  • City tours: nonprofit, 50 different walking tours, free but donations accepted. Local history buffs share their knowledge and wax poetic, from Russian Hill stairways and Alfred Hitchcock film locations to Chinatown tongs and gangs and the 1906 earthquake and fire. Daily, 1.5–2 hours, no reservations, sfcityguides.org.
  • Bay Area Brewery Tour: “transportation for beer education,” BABT shuttles connoisseurs to a host of haunts for tastings, informative beer banter and tours of some of the area’s most beloved breweries, including Southern Pacific in the Mission, Pyramid in Berkeley, and Lagunitas Brewing Company in Marin County. $95, round-trip transportation, visits to 3 breweries, lunch and a souvenir glass. Tours Fri–Sun.Bus pick-up at Caltrain station, 4th and Townsend St, bayareabrewerytours.com.
  • Gold Rush history: Barbary Coast Trail. Walking path created in 1998 has 170 bronze Barbary Coast Trail medallions in the sidewalk over 3.8-mile, covering gold diggers, shanghai dens, railroad barons and ship graveyards. Printed pocket guide for $10, at the Historical Society and Visitor Information Center in Hallidie Plaza; Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail book; or download an audio tour. Goes from 88 5th St to 499 Jefferson St, barbarycoasttrail.org.
  • Art: First Thursday is like happy hour for art lovers, when some 50 different galleries around the city (most of them downtown) stay open late so culture vultures can survey the city’s art scene with wine, nibbles and no pressure. 5:30–7:30pm. A map/list of galleries at firstthursdayart.com.

Food

Yikes! The list below specifically does not scratch the surface in any way shape or form.

      • Slanted Door
      • Flour + Water
      • Boulevard
      • Greens
      • Dim sum: Yank Sing – fresh and flavorful shanghai dumplings with pork, scallion, ginger and a shot of hot broth, stuffed crab claws, and goldfish dumplings filled with crunchy shrimp and bamboo shoot tips.
      • Chinatown: Many restaurants, like Yuet Lee (1300 Stockton) for superb seafood, House of Nanking (919 Kearny St) for Shanghai-style cooking and R&G Lounge (631 Kearny St) for salt-and-pepper crab.
      • Italian: in North Beach
      • Ice cream: Humphry Slocombe, Bi-Rite, Smitten, Ghirardelli Factory
      • Pastries: Miette, Boulettes Larder, Tartine
      • Sourdough: Boudin Bakery on Fisherman’s Wharf, from a mother dough first cultivated here in 1849. Watch the bread-making process, sample it, buy it.
      • SF Ferry Building & Marketplace – open everyday with stores and kiosks inside, but comes alive Tu/Th/Sat 10-2 selling local produce and products
      • Mexican: Mission District – everywhere claims “the best” burrito. Try Taqueria Cancun (2288 Mission St), Pancho Villa (3071 16th St), El Farolito(2777 Mission St), or La Taqueria (2889 Mission St.)
      • Food trucks in the Presidio: Sundays, check out Picnic at the Presidio, with dozens of food vendors, free lawn games, live music and a “bubble bar” on the expansive lawn of the Presidio’s Main Post, overlooking the Golden Gate. Thursdays, Twilight at the Presidio is a food truck “campout” with lantern-lit dining cabanas, cocktail service, Adirondack chairs, music and s’more fire pits.
      • Pizza: Tony’s Pizza Napoletana- the first American chef to win the World Champion Pizza Maker title in Naples, in North Beach. No reservations, often a wait. 1570 Stockton.