Golden Gate Bridge
Walk or cycle across for the classic view.
San Francisco in pictures
San Francisco
Fog, hills and the Golden Gate
Destinations › North America › San Francisco
Cable cars, sourdough and one of the world's most beautiful bridges — San Francisco is compact, walkable and the gateway to Northern California.
Fly nonstop from Toronto in about 6 hours.
Iconic cable cars, plus Muni and BART; the city is very walkable but hilly, so plan for the climbs.
Walk or cycle across for the classic view.
Book the ferry and tour well ahead.
Murals, taquerias and the city's best sun.
Giant redwoods a short trip north.
The central hotel district, with cable car lines running through it and Chinatown, the Financial District and the Ferry Building all walkable downhill. It is the obvious first-timer base and the transit is unbeatable. Be clear-eyed about two things: the character of the streets changes fast as you move west and south toward the Tenderloin and Mid-Market, where visible homelessness and open drug use are common; and Nob Hill, while calmer and handsomer, is up a serious gradient from everything else.
Low-rise, flat, full of independent shops and small restaurants, with Muni Metro at Van Ness and BART close at Civic Center. This is the best compromise base — a real neighbourhood that still has rail access and level pavements, which is a rarer combination in this city than it sounds. The honest caveat is that the walk east toward Civic Center and UN Plaza is rough, so orient yourself westward.
Flat, low-key, residential, right on the northern waterfront with the Presidio and the Golden Gate Bridge at the end of the road. If you are travelling with older parents or small children this is the calmest and physically easiest part of the city to stay in, and the Marina Green and Crissy Field give you a long level shoreline walk on your doorstep. The cost is transit: there is no rail here, only buses, and you are a long way from the Mission and from BART.
The sunniest district in a foggy city, largely flat, dense with taquerias, murals and Latin American grocers alongside a newer wave of bars and cafés. BART stops at 16th Street Mission and 24th Street Mission, so you are connected to the airport and the East Bay without changing. It suits younger travellers and anyone who came here to eat. The plazas around 16th Street BART are gritty and can feel chaotic, which is worth knowing rather than worth avoiding the neighbourhood over.
The foil-wrapped, rice-included, tightly rolled burrito that originated in this neighbourhood and was then exported to the rest of the world. It is a full meal in one hand and it is not the same thing as a Mexican burrito. Taquerias run the length of Mission Street and Valencia between roughly 16th and 24th; ask for it 'super' if you want everything in it. Order at the counter, watch it being built, and be decisive — the queue behind you is not patient.
Local Dungeness crab is the regional seafood, with the season running roughly from late autumn into spring, though commercial openings are frequently delayed and the dates move year to year. Cioppino is the tomato-and-shellfish stew that came out of the Italian fishing families of North Beach, and it is a San Francisco invention rather than an Italian one. Fisherman's Wharf sells both to visitors; North Beach and the Inner Richmond generally cook them better.
Chinatown is the historic centre, and the distinction to know is that Grant Avenue is the tourist street while Stockton Street one block over is the working grocery street where people actually shop. For the food locals eat, go further out: Clement Street in the Inner Richmond and Irving Street in the Sunset for dim sum, roast duck and hand-pulled noodles. The city also has an unusual concentration of Burmese cooking — tea leaf salad is the dish to order — and Little Saigon in the Tenderloin, around Larkin Street, for banh mi and pho.
San Francisco sourdough gets its distinctive sourness from local wild yeast and bacteria, which is why it genuinely tastes different here. The Ferry Building Marketplace at the foot of Market Street is the city's food hall — bread, cheese, oysters, coffee — and the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market sets up outside it on several days a week, with Saturday by far the biggest. It is touristy and it is still good, and the building is flat, indoor and on the F-line, which makes it an easy stop with anyone slow-moving.
Alcatraz, and book it weeks ahead — Alcatraz City Cruises, operated by Hornblower, is the only authorised ferry provider and sailings sell out far in advance, so anyone offering you tickets elsewhere is reselling. Ferries leave from Pier 33, between the Ferry Building and Fisherman's Wharf. The cellhouse audio tour, narrated by former guards and inmates, is one of the few audio guides genuinely worth doing. Allow the whole morning including the crossings.
Come back to Pier 33 and take the F-line historic streetcar, or just walk, south along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building for a late lunch. This entire stretch is flat, waterfront and easy, which is a rarity here. Carry on into the Financial District on foot if you have energy left.
Ride a Powell Street cable car up and over Nob Hill. The queue at the Powell and Market turntable can be brutal; boarding at a stop partway along the route is usually far quicker. Get off near the crest and walk down into Chinatown through the Stockton Street markets rather than the souvenir end of Grant Avenue.
Golden Gate Park. The de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences face each other across the Music Concourse, with the Japanese Tea Garden and the San Francisco Botanical Garden a few minutes' walk away, so you can do a lot without moving far. The N Judah line runs along the park's southern edge and several bus routes cross it. Some park roads are closed to cars, which makes the interior unexpectedly peaceful.
Head north to the Presidio. Crissy Field gives you a flat shoreline path leading directly to Fort Point, the brick fort tucked underneath the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge, with the bridge's pedestrian sidewalk running above. The Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Center sits at the bridge's south end. It is windy here on almost any day of the year — this is not the afternoon to be underdressed.
The Mission on foot. BART to 16th Street Mission or 24th Street Mission, then the murals at Balmy Alley and Clarion Alley, lunch on Mission Street, and Dolores Park for the classic skyline view down the slope. If you have a car or are willing to rideshare, finish at Twin Peaks or Bernal Heights for sunset over the whole city.
A waterfront village across the bay with houseboat colonies, a hillside of Mediterranean-looking houses, and the single best view back at San Francisco. Take the Golden Gate Ferry from the Ferry Building — the crossing is genuinely the point of the trip, not just the transport. Sausalito's waterfront is flat and walkable once you land. A popular variation is to cycle over the Golden Gate Bridge and take the ferry back, which spares you the return climb.
Old-growth coast redwoods in a fog-fed valley less than an hour north by car, and the closest you will get to the big trees without driving to the Sierra. Critically, you cannot simply turn up: the National Park Service requires reservations for all vehicles and all shuttle riders, booked in advance through GoMuirWoods.com. Shuttle days and pick-up points vary, so check the site rather than assuming. The main valley boardwalk is flat and manageable; the trails climbing out of the valley are not.
BART runs straight under the bay to Downtown Berkeley station, which makes this the easiest car-free day trip on the list — no reservation, no ferry timetable, no planning. Walk up into the UC Berkeley campus for the Campanile view, browse Telegraph Avenue, and eat along North Shattuck in the area everyone still calls the Gourmet Ghetto, which is where California cuisine was effectively invented. A comfortable half-day if you want to be back for dinner.
San Francisco is harder work than its reputation suggests, and it is worth being blunt about why before you book. The hills are the headline. Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill and much of Pacific Heights are steep enough that some sidewalks have steps built into them. This is punishing with a stroller and genuinely unsafe-feeling with a walker or a cane, and mapping apps will route you up a wall without warning you. The fix is to plan along the flat corridors and accept that you will skip some things: the Embarcadero, the Marina Green and Crissy Field, Golden Gate Park, the Mission, Hayes Valley and the Ferry Building are all level. Nob Hill, Lombard Street and Coit Tower are not. Cable cars are not accessible, and SFMTA says so plainly on its own cable car page: they are not equipped with accessible boarding. Beyond wheelchairs, they involve stepping up onto a high vehicle, sometimes standing on an outside running board, and queueing in the wind. If a grandparent has their heart set on the experience, the California Street line is usually less mobbed than the two Powell lines, and boarding at a mid-route stop beats the turntable queue. The accessible way to move around the city is Muni buses, which are ramp-equipped, plus the underground Muni Metro stations and BART stations, which have elevators — check SFMTA's Muni Metro elevator status page before you commit to a route, particularly downtown. Note that surface Muni Metro stops out in the neighbourhoods are street-level boarding islands, not stations. Alcatraz deserves a specific warning, and the National Park Service publishes the numbers. The ferry itself is accessible, but the island is a quarter-mile climb from the dock to the cellhouse with an elevation change of 130 feet, about 40 metres, which NPS itself compares to a thirteen-storey building. NPS runs the SEAT tram, boarding to the left of the dock, to carry visitors with mobility impairments up; there is an elevator to the cellhouse's second story and accessible restrooms at both the dock and beside the cellhouse. Ask about the tram at the dock when you land rather than assuming. Beyond that main accessible route, NPS says most roadways and walking routes on the island contain extreme slopes. The weather trap catches almost every Toronto visitor. San Francisco's summer is not a summer. July and August are the foggiest, windiest and coolest of the summer months in the city proper, especially west of Twin Peaks and out at the bridge, while September and October are typically the warm, clear ones. Pack real jackets even in August, and pack them for the grandparents first. On the flight: about five and a half hours nonstop from Toronto with a three-hour time change westward, which is a long day but the easier jet-lag direction. BART runs directly from SFO into the city step-free, which is a real advantage over wrestling luggage into a taxi. Finally, be prepared for visible street homelessness and open drug use in parts of the Tenderloin, Mid-Market and around Civic Center. It is concentrated, it is mostly not a threat to you, and it can still be genuinely upsetting with children — route around those blocks rather than through them.
US dollars. Cards and phone wallets are accepted essentially everywhere, though it is worth carrying a little cash for small market vendors. For transit, the regional card is Clipper, which covers Muni including the cable cars, BART, Golden Gate Ferry and San Francisco Bay Ferry, and more than twenty other Bay Area agencies on one card. Clipper also offers a pay-with-phone option, so you need not hunt down a plastic card. Use a no-foreign-transaction-fee card if you have one, and decline any terminal that offers to bill you in Canadian dollars.
The standard American expectation applies: tip on the pre-tax total at sit-down restaurants and bars at roughly the Toronto rate or a bit above, plus rideshare and taxi drivers, hotel housekeeping and guides. The San Francisco quirk to watch for is that many restaurants add a stated surcharge to the bill, typically labelled for staff healthcare or a city mandate, and it is disclosed on the menu or at the bottom of the bill. That surcharge is not a tip and does not replace one — read the bill before you add, because it is easy to double up or, worse, to assume it covered you and leave nothing.
Type A and Type B sockets, 120 volts, 60 hertz — exactly the same as Ontario. Nothing to buy, no adapter, no converter, no voltage worries for medical devices.
Safe, and unusually good. San Francisco's water comes largely from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir high in the Sierra Nevada, delivered by the SFPUC, and it meets federal and state drinking water standards. Drink it from the tap and carry a refillable bottle.
English, with Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish and Tagalog all widely spoken across the city. No barrier at all for a GTA traveller, and no need for a translation app.
Canada's official travel advice for the United States has sat at the lowest level, take normal security precautions, but check travel.gc.ca before you go. The one San Francisco risk that should actually change your behaviour is vehicle break-ins, known locally as bipping — rental cars are specifically targeted. Leave nothing visible in the car, and do not treat the trunk as safe, because thieves watch you load it before you walk away. Park in staffed garages rather than street spaces at trailheads, viewpoints like Twin Peaks, and around the Palace of Fine Arts. Beyond that: phone snatching along Market Street and at transit stops, and normal city awareness after dark.
September and October are the warmest and clearest; summer is famously foggy.
Compare the ways to get there, then build a day-by-day plan.
Fly nonstop from Toronto in about 6 hours.
Iconic cable cars, plus Muni and BART; the city is very walkable but hilly, so plan for the climbs.
September and October are the warmest and clearest; summer is famously foggy.