Discover San Francisco: Cable Cars, Fog and the Golden Gate
Travel guide · editorialWhen the fog the locals affectionately call "Karl" creeps over the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco shows its most famous face. A trip to San Francisco takes you up steep hills and aboard clanging cable cars, past Victorian houses, through Chinatown and to a bay steeped in history. For a city break in California, this compact city on the Pacific is a classic.
Gold Rush, Earthquakes and Flower Children
In 1776, the Spanish founded Mission Dolores and the Presidio. After gold was discovered in 1848, the small village of Yerba Buena became a major city almost overnight: within just a few years, tens of thousands of fortune seekers poured in from around the world, among them many Chinese immigrants who founded the oldest Chinatown in North America. The earthquake and fires of 1906 destroyed large parts of the city. In the 1950s, the Beat poets gathered in North Beach, in 1967 hippies celebrated the "Summer of Love" in Haight-Ashbury, and the Castro district became the center of the gay rights movement, closely associated with the name Harvey Milk. With nearby Silicon Valley, San Francisco became a tech metropolis, today especially around artificial intelligence.
Sights in San Francisco
The best way to cross the Golden Gate Bridge is on foot or by bike; for views, head to Fort Point, Battery Spencer on the Marin side, and Baker Beach. The prison island of Alcatraz can only be reached with the official ferry operator, and you should book tickets weeks in advance. The cable cars, the last manually operated cable cars in the world, climb Powell and California Streets; you can marvel at their drive mechanism in the free Cable Car Museum. Lombard Street with its hairpin turns, the Victorian "Painted Ladies" at Alamo Square in the Western Addition, Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill and the Ferry Building with its farmers market are further highlights. At Fisherman's Wharf, the sea lions lounge at Pier 39 – touristy, but entertaining.
Museums and Neighborhoods
Golden Gate Park, larger than Central Park in New York, is home to the de Young Museum with its observation tower, the California Academy of Sciences with its living roof and rainforest dome, and the Japanese Tea Garden. SFMOMA in the South of Market neighborhood is one of the largest modern art museums in the US, and the Exploratorium at Pier 15 is a hands-on museum for all ages. Each neighborhood has its own character: the Mission District with murals and burritos, the Castro with rainbow flags, North Beach with Italian cafés and City Lights Bookstore. Hayes Valley draws visitors with boutiques and beer gardens, the Lower Haight with pubs and record stores, and nearby Haight-Ashbury with hippie nostalgia.
Eating in San Francisco
San Francisco's restaurants are among the best in the US, with a strong focus on seasonal ingredients from Northern California. Classics include sourdough bread, which has been baked since the Gold Rush, clam chowder served in a hollowed-out bread bowl, Dungeness crab in winter, and the Mission burrito, a generously stuffed giant burrito from the Mission District. Chinatown and the Richmond District offer excellent dim sum, while cioppino, a fish stew created by Italian fishermen, comes from North Beach. The farmers market at the Ferry Building is a feast for food lovers on Saturdays, and Napa Valley supplies the wine to go with it.
Getting Around, When to Go and Day Trips
From SFO airport, the BART train takes about 30 minutes to reach downtown, and also runs to Daly City and across the bay to Oakland and Berkeley. Within the city, Muni buses, streetcars and cable cars operate; you pay with a Clipper card or contactless. A car is more of a hindrance because of the scarcity of parking and the steep grades. The best time to visit San Francisco is September and October, when the "Indian summer" brings warm, clear days; in July and August it is often cool and foggy, so always pack a jacket. A ferry takes you to Sausalito with its houseboats, and to the south, Brisbane tempts with hiking trails on San Bruno Mountain. Other excursions lead to the redwoods of Muir Woods, into the wine country of Napa and Sonoma, or along the coast to Half Moon Bay.