Things to Do in San Francisco

Called one of the seven wonders of the world, the Golden Gate Bridge is San Francisco’s best known landmark. Everyone can recognize its magnificent span of orange steel from its appearance in numerous movies and TV shows. When it was completed in 1937, its two 746 foot towers that anchor the bridge’s single-suspension were the tallest buildings in San Francisco. The suspended road is supported by two 7,000 foot cables.

The engineering marvel was completed in spite of increasing opposition and it now connects San Francisco with the Marin County communities. Pedestrians and bikers are allowed on the sidewalks of the bridge but skateboards, roller blades and roller skates are not. On both sides of the bridge there are vista points with spectacular views and excellent photo opportunities.

The big green heart of San Francisco, Golden Gate Park is 1,017 acres of beautiful flora and fauna. This popular park is a favorite weekend destination, a perfect spot for lunch or practicing tai chi, and is a great place to take a date or visitors. The park is incredibly diverse, carved out from ancient windswept sand dunes by park engineer William Hammond Hall and renowned master gardener John McLaren.

The park includes lush gardens, a breathtakingly beautiful Victorian Conservatory of Flowers, a Japanese Tea Garden, the San Francisco Botanical Garden, Stow Lake, a beautiful Dutch Windmill, Oak Woodlands Natural Areas, the California Academy of Sciences, a Music Concourse where numerous concerts take place throughout the year, and so much more. Even if you live in San Francisco, you are going to be discovering new wonderful spots in the park all the time.

For 218 years, until 1994 when it became a park, Presidio of San Francisco was a military base for Spain, Mexico and the USA. Today, Presidio is a Historic Landmark, located at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. Presidio is a lush, verdant park rich in diverse plants, some of them rare, with two hundred kinds of birds and a number of well-preserved historic structures. What was once an Air Service/Air Corps/Army Air Forces airfield is today Crissy Field Center, an urban environmental education center with rich programs for schools and summer camps.

There is also the Visitors Center, with rotating exhibits about the history of Presidio. Presidio is great fun to walk around, with its centuries old architecture. Things to do include visiting the national cemetery and the historic airfield, strolling through shady forests or walking to the beach. With such close proximity to the Golden Gate Bridge, Presidio offers a unique view of the city landmark.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is home to a renowned collection of contemporary and modern art, completely focused on 20th-century art and artists. The museum’s permanent collection has more than 33,000 sculptures, paintings, photographs, design, architecture and media arts. The museum’s exhibit space covers 170,000 square feet, making it one of the largest modern and contemporary art museums in the world.

The Museum started its life in 1935 with a modest 36 artworks donated by Albert M. Bender. Some of the museum’s biggest treasures are works by Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and Ansel Adams, among others. The museum organizes about twenty exhibitions and three hundred educational programs every year.

151 3rd St, San Francisco, California 94103, Phone: 415-357-4000, Video

Rain or shine, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, the Ferry Plaza and Ferry Building come alive with over a hundred vendors selling local produce, crafts, freshly made breakfast and lunch, and a lot of fun. You will find local farmers selling their organic seasonal produce, artisanal food, flowers, fresh cheeses, honey, meats, fruits, veggies and much more.

There are Market-to-Table demos by popular local chefs, and the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture’s (CUESA) Food Shed education tent is there to offer a deeper understanding of what sustainable food systems are. The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is a California-certified farmers market managed by CUESA.

Embarcadero & Green Street, San Francisco, California 94102, Phone: 415-353-5650

Before becoming home of the infamous penitentiary, Alcatraz Island was the site of the country’s first lighthouse, offering the most magnificent views of the San Francisco skyline, as well as the first American-built fort on the entire West Coast. It also serves as the home of a large bird colony, and features gardens and tide pools.

Today, the main reason why thousands of visitors take a scenic ferry ride across to the Alcatraz island is the infamous Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, a maximum high-security federal prison that operated from 1934 to 1963. Off-limits to the public for many years, the abandoned prison fires the imagination, which is mostly fueled by numerous movies and stories of notorious criminals who spent their years on the Rock. The prison was home to 1,576 of America's most dangerous criminals, Al Capone being one of them.

Pier 33 B201 Fort Mason, San Francisco, California 94122, Phone: 415-981-7625

Located in San Francisco’s marina district, The Palace of Fine Arts is a strange, magnificent, over-the-top building created in 1915 as an art exhibition space for the Panama-Pacific Exposition.

Architect Bernard Maybeck was inspired by some famous Roman and Greek ruins and surrounded his creation with a lagoon, gardens, and walking paths.

The end result was so beautiful and became so popular that, after the exhibition, when other pavilions were demolished, the Palace of Fine Arts was preserved and continues to be used for art exhibitions but also for weddings and lavish parties; this building is a photographers’ dream. The Palace is still standing on its original site and is one of the most recognizable San Francisco icons.

3301 Lyon St, San Francisco, California 94123, Phone: 415-563-6504

Located in Golden Gate Park, surrounded by lush gardens and expanses of green space, the California Academy of Sciences is a San Francisco museum no visitor should miss.

All in one place you can see a planetarium, an aquarium, and a natural history museum – the only place in the world to offer so much under one roof (and on that roof you can see wildflowers).

Four floors are occupied by a real, thriving rainforest and the aquarium is home to a spectacular coral reef. After exploring all of the rich diversity that Earth has to offer, step into the planetarium and see our planet from an entirely different perspective. With more than 26 million specimens and 400,000 square feet, the California Academy of Sciences is one of the biggest natural history museums in the world.

55 Music Concourse Dr, San Francisco, California 94118, Phone: 415-379-8000

Almost all tours of San Francisco eventually lead to Fisherman's Wharf. This popular waterfront neighborhood includes the northern waterfront from Ghirardelli Square and Van Ness Avenue east to Pier 35. Funky city streetcars will take you there directly, or you can just walk downhill, where all the fun is. While it is now a popular tourist area, Fisherman’s Wharf is still an active home to fishermen and their fleets.

There is a lot to do at Fisherman’s Wharf – it is home to Pier 39, Ghirardelli Square, which contains the famous chocolate factory, Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, a Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, and so much more. You will find the city’s best seafood restaurants here, and a noisy sea lion colony just next to Pier 39. The best time to come is the Fourth of July to watch the spectacular fireworks display over the water.

Located in the Nob Hill neighborhood at the Washington-Mason powerhouse and car barn, the Cable Car Museum contains a collection of historic cable cars, mechanical displays, and photos in exhibits that feature the San Francisco cable car system. The still working cable cars are also considered a working museum - You can two restored cars from the Clay Street Hill Railroad, and a perfectly restored car from the Sutter Street Railway from the 1870s, the only existing car from the original cable car company.

Established in 1974, the museum is part of the complex that also includes the Ferries and Cliff House Railway Co. building built in 1887 with the cable car powerhouse and the car "barn." Visitors can see the powerhouse from two overlook galleries – access is not allowed.

1201 Mason St, San Francisco, California 94108, Phone: 415-474-1887