California > San Francisco
Even people who hate the USA love San Francisco. It has an atmosphere of genteel chic mixed with offbeat innovation, and a self-effacing flutter-of-the-eyelids quality so blatantly missing from brassy New York and plastic LA. This is a place that breeds alternatives: it's the home of the Beat Generation, flower power, student protest and gay pride. One of the USA's most attractive cities, San Francisco's hilly streets provide some gorgeous glimpses of the San Francisco Bay and its famous bridges. This is a mosaic of a city, a big picture made from the colorful tiles of bustling Chinatown, the funky Mission, gay Castro, clubby SoMa, hippie Haight-Ashbury and faux-hemian North Beach.
If you like partying and dress-ups, San Francisco could be just the ticket. Chinese New Year (late January/early February) is celebrated in Chinatown with color and verve similar to Chinese centers in Asia. In late April, Cherry Blossom Festival is celebrated in Japantown with martial arts demos, tea ceremonies and other Japanese events. Also in April is San Francisco's Film Festival, the oldest in the USA. On the third Sunday in May, over 100,000 joggers take part in the Bay to Breakers run, many of them in silly costume (and sometimes in nothing at all).
June is a celebratory month for San Francisco's gay community, with a film festival and Gay Pride Week leading up to the last Sunday in June, when the outrageous Gay Freedom Day Parade is held. The evening before the parade is the Pink Saturday party on Castro St, attended by up to half a million people.
Stern Grove, a woodsy park in the Sunset district, teems with music lovers on weekends during its free June-through-August concert series. Cable car drivers compete to be the loudest or most tuneful in the late June/early July Cable Car Bell-Ringing Championship. September is chock full of festivals: there's free Opera in the Park, free Shakespeare performances, a blues festival and the Folsom St Fair, the sexiest S&M street fair in the city. San Francisco really turns it on for Halloween (31 October): this is the most crazed night of the year, with hundreds of thousands of costumed revelers taking to the streets, particularly Castro St.
When to Go
San Francisco is a popular location any time of the year. Summer is the prime tourist season, so prices are higher, lines are longer and finding a parking place is about as easy as working out what to wear to the Folsom St Fair. San Francisco's summer weather is none too hospitable anyway: the bay is often foggy, while inland or north in the Wine Country it's often too hot and dusty for comfort. Local weather patterns are highly unpredictable, but generally the best months weather-wise are between mid-September and mid-November.Getting There and Away
The Bay Area has three major airports: San Francisco International Airport on the west side of the bay, Oakland International Airport on the east side of the bay, and San Jose International Airport at the southern end of the bay. Most international flights use San Francisco (at Oakland and San Jose, 'international' means Mexico and Canada), but all three are important domestic gateways, so you should have little trouble finding a flight or connection to just about anywhere on the continent.Although a variety of bus companies have services between other Bay Area communities and San Francisco, Greyhound is the only regular long distance bus company operating in the region. Their buses arrive and depart at the Transbay Terminal in SoMa. From San Francisco, Greyhound has frequent runs to Los Angeles (8 to 11 hours) and, less often, Seattle (19 to 25 hours) and Lake Tahoe (5 to 10 hours). As an alternative to Greyhound, try the funky Green Tortoise bus line, a favorite of backpackers because they manage to combine getting there with enjoying yourself along the way. Green Tortoise information is also available from the Green Tortoise Guest House in North Beach. Their north-south trip runs between Seattle and Los Angeles via San Francisco, but they also have trips to the Northern California redwoods, Yosemite and the Southwest desert.
Amtrak is the US national train system, and its Bay Area terminal is at Jack London Square in Oakland. A free shuttle bus connects with San Francisco's CalTrain station and the Ferry Building at the Embarcadero. Traveling north from Los Angeles, it's equally simple to transfer to CalTrain at San Jose and take that service to San Francisco. Amtrak's main Bay Area routes are the San Joaquin (Oakland - Bakersfield), the Three Capitols (San Jose - Oakland - Sacramento) and the Coast Starlight (Seattle - Oakland - San Jose - Los Angeles).
Freeways crisscross the Bay Area, and once you're outside of the city you'll be glad to have a car. Highway 101 runs south to Los Angeles and north to Oregon, but its bayside stretch is a continuous traffic jam - sometimes stationary, sometimes high-speed, but always solid. Interstate 280, parallel and slightly to the west, is much more attractive and easier on the nerves. Highway 1 is the slow but scenic coast route. On the east side of the bay, Interstate 80 runs across the Bay Bridge north through Berkeley and inland through Sacramento, the state capital, on its way to Reno, Nevada. Interstate 580 swings inland from the East Bay to meet Interstate 5, the fastest route south to Los Angeles; the trip takes 6 or 7 boring hours. The 210 mile (340km) route inland to Yosemite starts along Interstate 580.
Places to Stay in San Francisco
OaklandOther Attractions
DowntownHaight-Ashbury
Golden Gate Park