San Francisco Overview

The City by the Bay: charm, cuisine, and avant-culture in one of the world's greatest natural settings. Ride a cable car, windsurf the Golden Gate, scribble poetry in a North beach cafe. Power-shop. See an opera, then club-crawl through cyber-cool SoMa.

Districts

San Francisco is quite small, yet its hilly terrain and patchwork demographic profile give it more distinctly defined neighborhoods than a city five times its size. As a result, the sights, sounds, and flavors of a community—and even its climate—can change within a single block.

Entertainment

Since the days of the Barbary Coast, San Franciscans have packed blues and comedy clubs, plays, movies, and the opera. The city also has a long tradition, by American standards, of a vital visual art scene.

Most of San Francisco's private art galleries are clustered downtown, to the east of Union Square on Geary and Sutter Streets. The more experimental galleries operate in SoMa lofts and Potrero Hill.

There are nightclubs all over the city, but locals favor North Beach and especially SoMa. Most clubs have DJs running the show, but live bands are common.

Dining and Drinking

As a restaurant town, San Francisco is rivaled only by New York. As varied as the San Francisco's ethnic patchwork is, so is the plethora of dining choices. One can eat Chinese in Chinatown and Italian in North Beach, but a rainbow spectrum of ethnic cuisine awaits you in central and outlying neighborhoods. Have you enjoyed the specialties of Eritrean, Afghan, and Tibetan fare? In San Francisco, you can.

Shining out over this sea of ethnic delights are the downtown beacons of fine dining that have really kept San Francisco on the culinary map, including the stylish downtown restaurants Postrio, Masa's, and Fringale. Chic and elegant or funky and loud, you'll eat better than you ever have in San Francisco. Bon Appetit!

Where To Stay

San Francisco's hotels run the gamut from head-of-state luxury to modest motels. The city's premier hotels are almost all in the downtown area including Nob Hill, Union Square, and the Financial District/Embarcadero. Motels along the main corridors in and out of town and pleasant bed-and-breakfasts in attractive, residential neighborhoods also exist. As a tourist destination with limited space, San Francisco hotels can charge premium prices, and do, especially downtown and on Nob Hill.

Did You Know?

San Francisco is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States. Each year more than 17 million visitors from around the world make the City by the Bay an important stop on their vacation or business itinerary.

Orientation/Geography

San Francisco is bordered on the north by the Golden Gate Strait, on the east by San Francisco Bay, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean.


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