San Francisco ****

CITY TRIP

San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial and cultural center of Northern California. The city covers a land area of 46.9 square miles (121 square kilometers) at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula. As of 2020, the metropolitan area, with 6.7 million residents, ranked 5th by GDP ($874 billion). In 2022, San Francisco had over 1.7 million international visitors - the fifth-most visited city from abroad in the United States.

What to do?

The city is known for its steep rolling hills and eclectic mix of architecture across the varies varied neighborhoods, as well as its cool summers, fog, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, Alcatraz, along with the Chinatown and Mission districts.

Cable cars

There is nothing quite like riding a cable car up and down the hills of San Francisco. While they symbolize the early innovation that made the city iconic, the experience of riding a cable car is timeless. The cable car experience starts while waiting at the cable car turnarounds (at Powell or California and Market Streets) or along the routes, waiting for the cable cars to approach. Once you hop on the cable car, you can either find a seat or hold on to the handles as you hang on for the ride. The cable car gripmen handle the grips to move the cars. And let's not forget about the cable car bell ringing. You can hear it from blocks away. It's used to get the attention of intersecting traffic.

The cable cars are the world's last manually operated cable car system, a tramway whose cars are pulled along by cables embedded in the street. These right-out-of-the-Smithsonian cable cars were named a national historic landmark in 1964. Refurbished and equipped with new tracks, cables, turnarounds and cable propulsion machinery, they operate much as they did on Aug. 2, 1873 when Andrew S. Hallidie guided the first car down Clay Street.

Sea Lions

A few California sea lions began “hauling out” on Pier 39’s K-Dock shortly after the Loma Prieta earthquake hit San Francisco in October 1989. By January 1990, the sea lions started to arrive in and and completely took over the dock.

With a plentiful supply of food from the Bay and an environment protected from predators, the Pier 39 Marina proved to be an ideal living situation for the sea lions. Within a few short months, the number of sea lions grew to more than 300 and hit an all-time record of 1,701 in November 2009.

Chinatown

The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chinatown is the largest Chinatown outside of Asia as well as the oldest Chinatown in North America. It is one of the top tourist attractions in San Francisco. You can use this site to learn more about the attractions, culture, history, and events in Chinatown.

Chinatown's annual Autumn Moon Festival celebrates seasonal change and the opportunity to give thanks to a bountiful summer harvest. The Moon Festival is popularly celebrated throughout China and surrounding countries each year, with local bazaars, entertainment, and mooncakes, a pastry filled with sweet bean paste and egg.

The festival is held each year during mid-September, and is free to the public.Chinatown is frequently the venue of traditional Chinese funeral processions, where a marching band takes the street with a motorcycle escort. The band is followed by a car displaying an image of the deceased (akin to the Chinese custom of parading a scroll with his or her name through the village), and the hearse and the mourners, who then usually travel to Colma south of San Francisco for the actual funeral. By union regulation, the procession route starts at the Green Street Mortuary proceeding on Stockton Street for six blocks and back on Grant Avenue, taking about one hour.

Alcatraz

Alcatraz is a small island 1.25 miles offshore from San Francisco. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse. a military fortification, and a military prison. In 1934, the island was converted into a federal prison, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The strong currents around the island and cold water temperatures made escape nearly impossible, and the prison became one of the most notorious in American history. The prison closed in 1963, and the island is now a major tourist attraction.

Alcatraz Island appears often in media and popular culture, including films dating from 1962 like Catch me if you can with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks.

Transportation

San Francisco's international airport offers flights to over 125 destinations while a light rail and bus network, in tandem with the BART and Caltrain systems, connects nearly every part of San Francisco with the wider region.

I've visited San Francisco many times for holidays and work. At one moment in time, our headquarters of Seagate/EVault was located in San Francisco, next to the W hotel (where of course I stayed many times).

Here is one of the best websites to plan your San Francisco City trip.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES