Destination San Francisco
Built on 43 hills and surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, San Francisco’s compact 47 square miles crowd the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula. San Francisco is blessed with a temperate marine climate and enjoys mild weather year-round. Temperatures seldom rise above 70 degrees or fall below 40 degrees. Morning and evening fogs roll in during the summer but rarely persist. The city of San Francisco has a population of 825,000 residents and in 2008 16.4 million visitors made the trip to visit the City by the Bay.
When planning your visit to San Francisco, be sure to leave a little time for rest and relaxation. “Green SF” has mini “green” itinerary mapped out for you…the easiest way to become an “eco-tourist” on the spot. Click here for more details.
It's no surprise that San Francisco is a perennial favorite among travelers both foreign and domestic. Often described as almost European in ambience, the City by the Bay packs a panoply of vibes into its surprisingly small 50-odd square miles at the tip of its namesake peninsula. Golden Gate Park, a masterpiece of nineteenth-century urban planning, combines the natural beauty of its gardens with the culture of its museums. The city's Chinatown, the largest in the western United States, serves tastes of the East, and the ever-gentrifying Mission district has some of the nation's best taco shops. Haight-Ashbury clings to traces of its hippie past, while well-heeled hoods such as Pacific Heights claim some of the priciest real estate on the planet. Despite its famously hilly landscape, San Francisco is a walkable city, with a serviceable public transportation system of buses, streetcars, and subways to span the gaps between destinations that are too far apart for walking. And, yes, there are those famous cable cars, whose routes along major tourist attractions and past scenic points—and pricey fares—mean few locals will be among your fellow riders.
San Francisco's favorite swath of green was not always so verdant. Before the late-nineteenth century, when Golden Gate Park was designed as the city's largest park, this thousand-acre parcel of land was covered with sand dunes (traces of which still exist toward the western edge, where the park meets the Pacific). Romantics rent rowboats on Stow Lake, the botanically inclined stroll among the beds of blooms by the Conservatory of Flowers, the contemplative take tea in the Japanese Tea Garden, and art and architecture lovers alike check out the De Young Museum, which was redesigned by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and reopened in late 2005.
In 2003, San Francisco's 1898 Ferry Building, at the base of Market Street, reopened as Ferry Building Marketplace, a collection of high-end food shops and restaurants. Several times a week, depending on the season, the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market is held next door. It has some of the best of the Bay Area's seasonal produce and attracts chefs who come to plan their menus du jour.
Smack in the middle of the harbor, Alcatraz and Angel Island draw crowds, but few know how rich each island's history really is. The battleship-shaped rock was built as a military fortress, became a jail for Confederate prisoners, and was occupied in protest by Native Americans from 1969 through 1971, during the launch of their national land-claims movement. Meanwhile, the natural beauty of Angel Island (often called the Ellis Island of the West) gives no hint that it was a prisoner of war processing center during World War II.
Undeniably the city's icon, the Golden Gate Bridge links the San Francisco Peninsula to the Marin Headlands. Completed in 1937, its Depression-era construction is so sturdy that the structure easily supported the 300,000 celebrants who stood on it to mark its fiftieth anniversary, flattening the characteristic arch. There will be fewer pedestrians with you if you choose to walk above the bay waters—perhaps the most scenic way to cross the span.