San Francisco

Introducing San Francisco

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

Outlandish Notions
Consider permission permanently granted to step up, strip down and go too far: 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, supplied by pioneering local organic farms. Following dinner, there’s the pressing matter of a drink. A brief flirtation with respectability in 1906 convinced City Hall to ban women from bars, effectively driving the action underground through Prohibition. Today San Francisco celebrates its speakeasies and vintage saloons, and with Wine Country providing a steady supply of America’s finest hooch – the West remains wild.

Natural Highs
California is one grand, sweeping gesture, a long arm cradling the Pacific. But then there’s San Francisco, that seven-by-seven-mile peninsula that looks like a forefinger pointing upwards. Take this as your hint to look up: you’ll find 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 43 hills. Cable cars provide easy access to Russian and Nob Hills, and splendid panoramas atop Coit Tower. But the most exhilarating highs are reached via Telegraph Hill’s garden-lined stairway walks, windswept hikes around Land’s End and climbs up rocky Corona Heights.

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

Ready to go?

These tours & activities make it easy:

• Take the Alcatraz and San Francisco City Tour
• Discover Yosemite on a 10-day active adventure
• Explore California's wine country
• Experience the best of California in 8 days

Last updated: Jan 22, 2013