Top 10 Tourist Tips
Ten Things to keep in mind when planning your first visit to San Francisco.
Would you like a pdf version of these tips for easy download and printing? It will be available soon: sign up for our newsletter and get it for free as soon as it is available.
Summary versions of the tips are at the top of the page; they are linked to the full, detailed versions farther down the page.
If you find any of these tips particularly helpful, or particularly useless, please let us know. Top Ten Feedback
Top Ten (Short Versions)
Go to Alcatraz
Go see Alcatraz, but make sure you get the boat that actually stops at Alcatraz so you can take the walking tour. Do not take the "tours" that just sail around the island. More Information
Use BART if you can
BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) is the fastest, cleanest, and most reliable public transportation. Use it when you can. More information.
-
Use Muni if you must
Muni is not nearly as fast, clean, or reliable as BART but it covers large sections of the city that BART does not. Especially for a tourist visit, you will spend much more time on Muni than on BART. More Information.
Ride the cable car for fun
The Cable Cars are great fun, but not great transportation. They are unique to San Francisco, fun to ride, and have great photo opportunities along any of the three routes but the routes don't cover much of the city and the lines to get on a cable car are often quite long. More Information.
Use the free visitor guides
The free tourist guides, especially San Francisco Guide and San Francisco Bay City Guide, are surprisingly handy. If you are on a brief visit, like a long weekend, and are focusing on a pretty standard tourist agenda, these are really all you need. More Information.
You will encounter homeless people
You will encounter beggars and homeless people. What to do is up to you. My advice is don’t give money to anyone on the street: you’re probably just paying for their drugs or alcohol. If you want to help them, donate to a charity that offers real help. More Information.
Don't be scared: walk uphill
If you’re worried about the neighborhood you’re in, walk up hill. (Legal disclaimer: there is no substitute for being aware of your surroundings and prudent in your choices. Do not blindly follow safety advice from me or anybody else.) More Information.
Be aware if you plan to bike for transportation
For a city as progressive and “green” as San Francisco likes to think itself to be, the city is surprisingly hostile to biking. If you bike in San Francisco, be careful about your route, lock your bike, and avoid congested areas. More Information.
Dress in layers
Dress in layers and be ready for the weather to change. San Francisco gets cold in the summer and hot in the winter. Additionally, San Francisco is famous for its microclimates: the weather in one neighborhood may be completely different than the weather in another. More Information.
Don't bother with Japan Town
Don’t bother with Japantown unless you have identified some specific destination or event there. More Information.
Tips on Transportation
For an American city, San Francisco has good public transportation and you can make great use of it on vacation here. Public Transportation is especially useful because much of San Francisco has bad rush hour traffic, little parking, and complicated traffic rules that often result in even locals being pulled over by the police or having their cars ticketed or towed. Keep in mind that there is a definite hierarchy to the different types of public transport, so the next three tips are: use BART if you can, use Muni if you must, and ride the Cable Car for fun.
Would you like a pdf version of these tips for easy download and printing? It will be available soon: sign up for our newsletter and get it for free as soon as it is available.
Top Ten Tips In Detail
Go to Alcatraz
Alcatraz is a great tourist stop: it is unique to San Francisco and there is a very good self-guided audio tour of the prison, available in several languages. Only one ferry company actually docks on the island. It is Alcatraz Cruises.
Other companies will try and sell you Alcatraz “experiences” and Alcatraz “tours” that are just boat rides that circle the island. This is like taking a tour where you get to see a cable car but you don’t get to ride it: it’s second rate.
You need to book your Alcatraz tickets in advance. If you plan on seeing Alcatraz on a Saturday or Sunday, the busiest days, you may have to book several weeks in advance. You can book on the Alcatraz Cruises web site.
On other note: if you want to see a movie to prepare for your trip to Alcatraz, do NOT rent “The Rock.” “The Rock” is a horrible movie and includes several scenes that bear little or no resemblance to the actual island. Watch the far superior Clint Eastwood film, “Escape from Alcatraz,” instead.
Back to Top.Use BART if you can
BART runs through roughly the middle of San Francisco. It also runs south towards, and a little past, SFO. This makes BART is a pretty good way to get to and from the San Francisco International Airport if your hotel is near a BART stop. Obviously how much you can use BART depends on your own itinerary, but it is worth a taking a quick look at BART's routes to see if you'll be able to use it much. BART also runs multiple lines through Oakland and the East Bay, which is enormously useful for area commuters, but not particularly helpful for San Francisco tourists. Route maps, details, etc. for BART are on its web site.
Back to TopUse Muni if you must
Muni is a nickname, a short version of Municipal Railway. Muni, operates buses and trolleys. The trolleys run both above and below ground. Muni covers much more of the city than BART and the cable cars do, but is less pleasant to ride.
Muni does not run on schedule as well as BART and the cable cars do and the service is less reliable in general. Getting around on Muni is straightforward and the bus and trolley coverage of the city is pretty good. However, certain Muni routes are packed during rush hour: buses and trolleys can get so full that you either can’t get on them at all or, if you do get on, it will be an unpleasant journey. Rush hour is usually about 8-9 AM in the morning and about 4:30 -6:00 PM in the afternoon. Muni is usually noisier, dirtier, and a bumpier ride than BART and the cable cars.
One last Muni tip: watch out for Muni buses when you are walking. Busses frequently run red lights, especially when fighting rush hour traffic. As with BART, there is a great deal of information on the Muni web site. There are also reasonable maps of the Muni routes in the free City Guides (see tip #5 below). A good option for tourists is the Muni Passport. It includes unlimited rides on the Muni system, which includes the Cable Cars. You can get Passports for 1, 3, or 7 days for $9, $15, and $20 respectively.
Back to TopRide the cable car just for fun
The Cable Cars are great fun, but not reliable transportation. Sitting outside on a cable car on a nice day is a fantastic way to see San Francisco. There are three problems with the cable cars as transportation. Problem #1: they are open to the weather: if it is wet or cold outside, you’ll be wet or cold on the cable car. Problem #2: the cable car routes are very limited. Problem #3: due to their popularity, there are usually long lines to ride the cable cars and they can be difficult to catch anywhere except at the ends of their routes (this is especially true of the Powell-Hyde line, which is by far the best route for tourist fun).
The cable cars are technically part of Muni, and you can find their routes and schedules on the Muni web site, but the cable cars also have their own web site. Of the three lines, Powell-Hyde has the best views and the most useful route, followed by Powell-Mason. The California Street line has the least useful route and is less of a photo op, but it can be very handy for certain destinations or if the lines of people waiting for the other routes are too long.
Back to Top.Use the Free Guides
The free tourist guides, San Francisco Guide and San Francisco Bay City Guide in particular, are surprisingly handy. They have good maps of the city, including public transportation, fairly good general tourist information, and, in the San Francisco Bay City Guide, a stylized map showing the hills of San Francisco in relation to major streets and land marks.
They are available from kiosks on the street in tourist heavy areas (especially Fisherman's wharf) and at many hotels. Both guides have matching web sites and you can have guides sent to you before your trip for a nominal fee. Their web sites also contain a lot of general San Francisco information: San Francisco City Guide and San Francisco Bay City Guide. The Bay City Guide site also has some nice, downloadable maps.
Back to Top.5. You will encounter beggars and homeless people
San Francisco, like most big cities, has problems with people begging on the streets and a homeless population. The city recognizes this and is working on it but there is a lot of disagreement about how to handle the problem.
In some neighborhoods, and most tourist areas, you won’t see any street people, but in others you may almost literally be tripping over them. How you handle this is up to you, but, having said that, here’s my advice:
- Don’t be intimidated. Not many panhandlers are aggressive, but aggressive panhandling is bad for everyone. Don’t encourage it.
- I believe that, most of the time, money given on the street is used to buy alcohol or drugs. This is why I suggest that, if you feel like you should help, you find a charity and donate to the charity. Then you know your money will go for real help. Charity is a personal thing, so I recommend you find one that aligns with your values but, if you would like a suggestion, The San Francisco Food Bank is a well regarded local charity that helps, among others, the poor and the homeless in the Bay Area.
- Do not talk to a crazy person. There aren’t many people on the street who are actually raving, but if you run into one and even make eye contact, let alone speak to them, they will follow you for blocks yelling at you. You can tell crazy people because they aren’t asking for money, they’re just standing around talking to themselves.
- The most street people intensive areas are the Tenderloin and Civic Center areas and there will be a fair amount of begging up and down Market Street and near Fisherman’s Wharf.
- I make an exception for beggars who are trying to offer entertainment value. Sometimes it is a funny placard and sometimes, like with the famous bushman, it is borderline performance art. I give these people money.
- Don’t let this section of the top ten list put you off of San Francisco: it’s a great place to visit and all of this discussion probably makes it sound scarier than it is.
Be aware if you plan to bike for transportation
There are several good places to rent bikes in San Francisco and there are a couple very nice bike tour routes, but be careful if you plan to do a lot of riding around the city for transportation.
The hills in San Francisco can make for tough biking: very hard climbs are followed by high speed descents. The biggest issue, however, is the traffic. San Francisco does not have a lot of bike lanes and relations between drivers and bikers aren’t always good.
Unless you have a lot of big city biking experience, you probably want to avoid trying to bike in very congested areas (Financial District, Chinatown, North Beach) especially during rush hour.
There is also a lot of bike theft in San Francisco, so lock your bike up with a very good lock. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has put together a pretty good resource list if you plan on doing a lot of biking in San Francisco: San Francisco Bicycle Resources
Back to Top.
Don't be scared: walk uphill
In San Francisco, as in most of California, real estate that commands scenic views is highly prized. Thus hill top areas in San Francisco tend to be much more expensive, and therefore safer and more residential, than low lying areas.
There are one or two exceptions, but in most of San Francisco, walking uphill will put you in the midst of safe, and often boring, rich people. If you want a vivid demonstration of this, walk out of the Tenderloin up into Nob Hill. Things get safer and more expensive with almost every foot of altitude you gain. (Legal disclaimer: there is no substitute for being aware of your surroundings and prudent in your choices. Do not blindly follow safety advice from me or anybody else.)
Back to Top.
Dress in layers
OK, OK: everyone is telling you to dress in layers for San Francisco, but I couldn’t leave it off of this list. There’s a lot of stores by Fisherman’s Wharf that survive by selling sweatshirts to tourists who didn’t bring their own and can’t believe how cold it got when the fog rolled in.
Remember that it is usually windier and colder by the water. It’s particularly chilly if you are taking a ferry ride of any kind. This is true even when it’s sunny weather but the ocean chill is even greater if there is a fog.
For planning your clothing, the best San Francisco weather forecasts I’ve seen are from Weather Underground. Make sure to pay attention to the forecast detail section to get a feel for how your clothing needs will change during the day. Weather Underground also has a very handy trip planner that lets you see the average weather in San Francisco for when your trip is scheduled for, even if you aren't going to San Francisco for weeks or months. One last note: do not use "SFO," the airport code, as your location for looking at San Francisco weather. The airport is several miles down the peninsula and can have different weather than the city.
Back to Top.
Don't bother with Japan Town
Japantown was a large and thriving area before the massive internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. For various reasons, including failed government 'renewal' programs, the neighborhood never came back as strong as it once was. Japantown has some nice places and shops but, unless you have a specific destination or event you want to see, it is not particularly interesting or fun for visitors to San Francisco.
Back to Top.