Lonely Planet San Francisco , livre ebook

San Francisco

Contents

Plan Your Trip

Welcome to San Francisco
San Francisco’s Top 10
What’s New
Need to Know
Top Itineraries
If You Like…
Month By Month
With Kids
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
LGBTIQ+
Shopping
Sports & Activities

Explore San Francisco

Neighbourhoods at a Glance
The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers
Top Sight - Alcatraz
Top Sight - Golden Gate Bridge & The Marina
Top Sight - Fisherman’s Wharf
Top Sight - Exploratorium
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
Downtown, Civic Center & SoMa
Top Sight - Ferry Building
Top Sight - Asian Art Museum
Top Sight - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
San Francisco by Cable Car
North Beach & Chinatown
Top Sight - Coit Tower
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Chinatown Alleyways
Nob Hill & Russian Hill
Top Sight - Cable Car Museum
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Shopping
Japantown, Fillmore & Pacific Heights
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
The Mission, Dogpatch & Potrero Hill
Top Sight - Mission Murals
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
The Castro
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
The Haight & Hayes Valley
Top Sight - Haight Street
Top Sight - Alamo Square Park
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Golden Gate Park & the Avenues
Top Sight - Golden Gate Park
Sights
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Sports & Activities
Day Trips from San Francisco
Sleeping

Understand San Francisco

Understand San Francisco
San Francisco Today
History
Literary San Francisco
Visual Arts
San Francisco Music
San Francisco Architecture

Survival Guide

Transportation
Arriving in San Francisco
Getting Around
Directory A–Z
Accessible Travel
Customs Regulations
Dangers & Annoyances
Discount Cards
Electricity
Emergency
Internet Access
Legal Matters
LGBT+ Travellers
Medical Services
Money
Opening Hours
Post
Public Holidays
Smoking
Taxes & Refunds
Telephone
Time
Toilets
Tourist Information
Visas
Volunteering
Women & Nonbinary Travelers
San Francisco Maps
Fisherman’s Wharf
The Piers
The Presidio
The Marina
Union Square
Civic Center & The Tenderloin
SoMa
Financial District
The Mission
Potrero Hill & Dogpatch
Russian & Nob Hills
North Beach & Chinatown
Japantown & Pacific Heights
The Castro
The Haight
Hayes Valley
Golden Gate Park & the Avenues

Behind the Scenes
Our Writers
Welcome to San Francisco

Grab your coat and a handful of glitter, and enter a wonderland of fog and fabulousness. So long, inhibitions; hello, San Francisco!

Outlandish Notions
Consider permission permanently granted to be outlandish: other towns may surprise you, but in San Francisco you will surprise yourself. Good times and social revolutions tend to start here, from manic gold rushes to blissful hippie ‘be-ins’. If there’s a skateboard move yet to be busted, a technology still unimagined, a poem left unspoken or a green scheme untested, chances are it’s about to happen here. Yes, right now. This town has lost almost everything in earthquakes and dot-com gambles, but never its nerve.

Food & Drink
Every available Bay Area–invented technology is needed to make dinner decisions in this city, with the most restaurants and farmers markets per capita in North America – all supplied by pioneering local organic farms. San Francisco set the gold standard for Wild West saloons, until drinking was driven underground in the 1920s with Prohibition. Today San Francisco celebrates its historic saloons and speakeasies – and with Wine Country and local distillers providing a steady supply of America’s finest hooch, the West still gets wild nightly.

Natural Highs
San Francisco is a 7-by-7-mile peninsula that looks like California’s thumb, pointed optimistically upwards. Take this as a hint to look up: you’ll notice San Francisco’s crooked Victorian rooflines, wind-sculpted treetops, and fog tumbling over the Golden Gate Bridge.
Heads are perpetually in the clouds atop San Francisco’s 48 hills. Cable cars provide easy access to Russian and Nob Hills, and splendid panoramas reward the slog up to Coit Tower. Earn exhilarating highs on Telegraph Hill’s garden-lined stairway walks, and windswept hikes around Lands End. If there’s another kind of high you’re seeking, that can also be arranged: marijuana is legal here for adults 18 and over with ID, and dispensaries and delivery are at your service.

Neighborhood Microclimates
Microclimates add magic realism to San Francisco days: when it’s drizzling in the outer reaches of Golden Gate Park, it might be sunny in the Mission. A difference of a few degrees between neighborhoods grants permission for salted-caramel ice cream in Dolores Park, or a hasty retreat to tropical heat inside the California Academy of Sciences’ rainforest dome. This town will give you goose bumps one minute, and warm you to the core the next.

The Painted Ladies alongside Alamo Square Park | LUCIANO MORTULA - LGM / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

Why I Love San Francisco
By Alison Bing, Writer
On my way from Hong Kong to New York, I stopped in San Francisco for a day. I walked up Grant Ave to Waverly Pl, just as temple services were starting – the fog was scented with incense and roast duck. I felt the magnetic pull to City Lights, and in the nonfiction cellar, I noticed a sign painted by a 1920s cult: ‘I am the door’. It’s true. San Francisco is the threshold between East and West, body and soul, fact and fiction.
That was more than 20 years ago. I’m still here. Now it’s your turn to open that door, and find yourself in San Francisco.
For more, see Our Writers
San Francisco’s Top 10

Golden Gate Bridge
1 Other suspension bridges are impressive feats of engineering, but the Golden Gate Bridge tops them all for razzle-dazzle showmanship. On sunny days, it transfixes crowds with its radiant glow – thanks to 28 daredevil painters who reapply around 1000 gallons of International Orange paint each week. When afternoon fog rolls in, the bridge performs its disappearing act: now you see it, now you don’t and, abracadabra, it’s sawn in half. Return tomorrow for its dramatic unveiling, just in time for the morning commute.
1 The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers

PHITHA TANPAIROJ / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

San Francisco’s Top 10

Alcatraz
2 From its 19th-century founding to detain Civil War deserters and Native American dissidents until its closure by Bobby Kennedy in 1963, Alcatraz was America’s most notorious jail. No prisoner is known to have escaped alive – but once you enter D-Block solitary and hear carefree city life humming across the bay, the 1.25-mile swim through riptides seems worth a shot. For maximum chill factor, book the spooky twilight jailhouse tour. Freedom never felt so good as it does on the return ferry to San Francisco.
1 The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers

BLAZG / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

San Francisco’s Top 10

Golden Gate Park
3 You may have heard that SF has a wild streak a mile wide, but that streak also happens to be 4.5 miles long. Golden Gate Park lets locals do what comes naturally: roller-discoing, drum-circling, starfish-petting, orchid-sniffing and stampeding toward the Pacific with a herd of bison. It’s hard to believe these lush 1017 acres were once scrubby sand dunes, and that San Franciscans have preserved this stretch of green since 1866, blocking development of casinos and resorts. Today everything SF needs is here: inspiration, nature and murals with microbrewed beer at the Beach Chalet.
1 Golden Gate Park & the Avenues

JAPANESE TEA GARDEN | WILLOWTREEHOUSE / SHUTTERSTOCK ©

San Francisco’s Top 10

Mission Murals
4 Love changed the course of art history in the 1930s, when modern-art power couple Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo honeymooned in San Francisco. Kahlo completed her first portrait commissions during her time in the city, and Rivera created mural masterpieces that inspired generations of San Francisco muralists. Today San Francisco’s Mission district is an urban-art showstopper, featuring more than 400 murals. Balmy Alley has some of the oldest, while 24th St and the landmark San Francisco Women’s Building are covered with glorious portrayals of community pride and political dissent.
1 The Mission, Dogpatch & Potrero Hill

PRECITA EYES RUNS MURAL TOURS | WENDY CONNETT / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO ©

San Francisco’s Top 10

The Castro
5 Somewhere over the rainbow crosswalk, you’ll realize you’ve officially arrived in the Castro district – the most out-and-proud neighborhood on the planet for more than 50 years. Walk in the footsteps of trans trailblazers along Castro St’s LGBTIQ+ walk of fame, get to know civil rights champions at America’s first GLBT History Museum and join history perpetually in progress at San Francisco’s month-long, million-strong Pride celebrations in June.
1 The Castro

XAVIERARNAU / GETTY IMAGES ©

San Francisco’s Top 10

Coit Tower
6 Wild parrots might mock your progress up Telegraph Hill, but they can’t expect to keep scenery like this to themselves. Filbert St Steps pass cliffside cottage gardens to reach SF’s monument to independent thinking: Coit Tower. Fire-fighting millionaire Lillie Hitchcock Coit commissioned this deco monument honoring firefighters, and muralists captured 1930s San Francisco in its lobby frescoes. Coit Tower’s paintings and panoramic viewing platform show San Francisco at its best: a city of broad perspectives, outlandish and inspiring.
1 North Beach & Chinatown

MATT MOLDENHAUER /