San Francisco is known for many things: its hippie history, its massive and culturally significant Chinatown district, its quirky culture, and its coastal views, all watched over by the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. You'll want to pack good walking shoes, since the city is pretty hilly, and a sweater, since it's also notoriously foggy, so you're totally comfortable as you explore this incredibly diverse and distinctive city.
The Musee Mecanique on Fisherman's Wharf is an old-timey arcade, similar to the ones on boardwalks years and years ago. They have over 300 "coin-operated mechanical musical instruments and antique arcade machines in their original working condition".. and you can play them all.
They've got player pianos, fortune tellers, skeeball, love testers, arm wrestling machines, music boxes, mechanical dioramas, pinball, and yes...they've got 1980's-era arcade games too. Among the more notable pieces in the collection are machines made by prisoners at Alcatraz from toothpicks, a steam-powered motorcycle, and Laffing Sal, a 6-foot-tall automaton that's been described as "famously creepy". Shiver.
Tip: The Musee Mecanique is free to visit-- just make sure to bring lots of change so you can work the machines. Most games are between 25 and 50 cents.
Billing itself as a "thrill-filled journey through San Francisco’s murky past", the Dungeon treats visitors to hour-long storytelling experiences that are just as fun as they are scary.
Guests get the inside scoop on the dark history of the Golden Gate City from top notch actors that regale you with tales of slavery, prostitution, theft, and murder. Sometimes, you even become part of the story.
Tip: They aren't shy about the subject matter, in fact, they recommend that children under ten don't attend the San Francisco Dungeon. But hey, you're the one who has to deal with the nightmares.
At 7D Experience, each theater is equipped with moving seats, custom surround sound, fog machines, 3D projections, and even special light guns that you use to actually become part of the movie you're watching!
The experiences are short, running around 10-15 minutes each, and include everything from zombie attacks, encounters with city-destroying giant monsters, and mad scientists!
Tip: One ride will set you back about $12, but if your experience has left you wondering what the other movies are like (and it will), you can snag discounted tickets for $7 after your first flick.
Mirror mazes can be more than just boardwalk diversions: they're often works of art. None exemplify this more than Magowan's Infinite Mirror Maze, a twisting, turning series of confusing tunnels that will stump kids and adults alike.
These guys are so serious about their mirror maze that you have to wear a pair of gloves to check it out, because trust me, you're going to be bumping into some walls, and they don't want to make it easy.
Tip: Entry is just five bucks, and considering how long you're going to be stuck in there, that's a steal.
Just off Pier 39 is Forbes Island, a sandy paradise with lighthouses, palm trees, and tiki decor... but, full disclosure, it's not actually an island. Forbes Island sits atop a barge decorated to appear as an island! When it was built in the 1970's, it was the pinnacle of luxury. Today, it's a fun novelty destination with a restaurant where you can enjoy dinner with some primo views. A water taxi will ferry you from shore to the island at your reservation time-- head to the top of the lighthouse for views of the Bay and Alcatraz, and then ask for a seat in the underwater dining room if you can!
You've probably seen pictures of the famously windy Lombard Street before, but it's the kind of thing you have to see in person to fully appreciate. San Francisco is notoriously hilly, and their way of building streets to compensate for that is one of the city's most charming quirks.
San Francisco is also known for its history with the beatnik scene of the 1950's and 1960's. Nowhere in the city is this more celebrated than at City Lights Bookstore. This indie bookstore was founded by famous poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as the first all-paperback bookstore and a beat publishing house. To this day, it retains an impressive selection of interesting titles.
The Beat Museum celebrates the lives and legacy of the "beat generation" authors like Jack Kerouac, who gave us "On the Road", inspiring more Great American Road Trips than anyone else. How fitting!
Located right across the street from Vesuvio, Kerouac's old hangout, the Beat Museum houses artifacts like Kerouac's car, original posters, loads of books, and more. You'll even have a chance to pick up a rare first edition of books by Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, to name a few.
Tip: If you're into vinyl, be sure to poke around the record collection. They've got lots of rare albums and they're all for sale.
And if the bookstore and Vesuvio weren't funky enough for you, then you'll want to stop at Specs' Twelve Adler Museum Cafe. Here an eclectic collection of oddities line the walls, there are old beatnik regulars sitting around, and the old-school drinks (and cheese and crackers), make this a great place to strike up a conversation with the locals.
Another spot rich in history is the Vesuvio Cafe, a European-style coffee shop (which also serves booze). This cafe has liquored up greats like Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, and Francis Ford Coppola.
Tucked away off a side street in Chinatown is the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, where you can watch as cookie-makers skillfully create over fifteen-thousand of the famous treats every single day.
Getting a peek at how the cookies are made is just part of the fun, though. You can also write your very own custom fortune, load up on tons of different varieties of cookies (yes, there's more than one type), and, most importantly, you'll get to sample an unrolled fortune cookie fresh out of the oven!
Tips: This place is tiny, but cool. Expect to be in and out in in five to ten minutes. Love the taste of fortune cookies? They'll sell you a huge bag of broken ones for cheap!
Crowded, chaotic and compact, San Francisco’s Chinatown is a feast for the senses. Enter on Grant Avenue near Bush Street through the ornate Chinatown Gate with its carved foo dogs (to ward off evil spirits) and browse the souvenir stops along Grant Avenue for kitschy trinkets and imports. Then head to Stockton Street for a taste of the real, working Chinatown, where residents shop for ginseng and herbal remedies, dried fish parts and delicacies such as live quail and water eels. For a glimpse of pre-20th century Chinatown, walk up the narrow stairs to the Tien Hau Temple (125 Waverly Pl) above Grant Avenue, on the alley known as the Street of Painted Balconies. Purportedly the oldest Taoist temple in the U.S. (circa 1852), it’s festooned with gold paper lanterns, calligraphy, incense, hundreds of candles and miniature shrines featuring photos of departed loved ones. Stop for a bite at one of innumerable eateries, including Yuet Lee for superb seafood, House of Nanking (919 Kearny St between Jackson St and Pacific Ave, houseofnanking.net) for Shanghai-style cooking and R&G Lounge (631 Kearny St between Clay and Commercial Sts, 415-982-7877) for specialties such as salt-and-pepper crab. Don’t miss the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory (56 Ross Alley, 415-781-3956), where some 20,000 fortune cookies are made every day—folded by hand as they come off an ancient-looking cookie conveyor belt.
The country's largest showcase for Asian art, the museum once housed the Main Library. Extensively and beautifully redesigned by Gae Aulenti, the architect responsible for the Musée d'Orsay conversion in Paris, the museum retains remnants of its previous role, including bookish quotes etched into the fabric of the building. The Asian has one of the world's most comprehensive collections of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Indonesian and Southeast Asian art, spanning 6,000 years of history with more than 15,000 objects. Artifacts range from Japanese buddhas and Indonesian shadow puppets to sacred texts and porcelains from the Ming Dynasty. The café, open only to visitors, serves Asian-inspired dishes, and the gift shop is well stocked with high-quality stationery, decorative items and a good selection of coffee table books.
Covering the length of three football fields along the Embarcadero waterfront, the Exploratorium is a science nerds' mecca, with more than 600 interactive exhibits that test the boundaries of physics and human perception. The museum was founded in 1969 by physicist Frank Oppenheimer (brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the A-bomb), who was dedicated to the idea of getting people to explore, experiment with and test their notions of scientific principles. Every aspect of the Exploratorium is hands-on—from the storage lockers that play tones when you touch them, to the outdoor “fog bridge” by artist Fujiko Nakaya that shrouds visitors in mist created by more than 800 high-pressure nozzles. New exhibits are introduced regularly, but the most popular mainstays include the Sweeper's Clock, a fascinating movie on a loop in which two street sweepers keep time by pushing around piles of trash; a marble maze you build from hardware store odds and ends; a mind-blowing parabolic mirror; a diorama of San Francisco made from 100,000 toothpicks; and the Tactile Dome, a crawl-through maze navigated in complete darkness using your sense of touch (advance reservations required). The steel-and-glass Bay Observatory on the second floor offers a spectacular perch to observe the geography, history and ecology of the San Francisco Bay. The in-house restaurant, Seaglass, showcases sustainable seafood and sushi, as well as small regional farms—and (note to parents) there's a full bar featuring artisanal cocktails.
Opened in 2009 by a foundation headed by Walt Disney's oldest daughter, Diane, the museum offers a fascinating look at the man behind the mouse. It's housed in a repurposed army barracks and gymnasium in the Presidio, a former military post that's now part of the national park service. Inside, galleries are set up chronologically, beginning with Walt's early cartoons for his high school yearbook and ending with his death in 1966. Highlights include an interactive gallery documenting Disney's innovations in sound synchronization; an original multiplane camera that shows how Walt and company first developed dimensional animation; the audio-enhanced nail-biting tale of how the Disney brothers financed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; and a 13-foot model of Disneyland as Walt originally envisioned it. Rotating exhibits give you an up-close look at some of the artists who have brought Disney's most beloved characters to life. The Fantasia-themed theater screens classics six days a week.
San Francisco prides itself on marching to the beat of its own drummer—even when it comes to sports. Among the extracurricular activities we regularly participate in are Big Wheel racing, doga (yoga with your pooch) and trampoline dodgeball. Then there’s minigolf at Urban Putt, an indoor steam-punk course inside a Victorian mortuary where you can putt your ball around the Transamerica Pyramid, inside a Jules Verne-esque submarine beneath the Bay, alongside cable cars and even through the 1906 earthquake. The bar and upstairs restaurant offer fabulous California comfort cuisine and portable bar bites, including decadent duck poutine, chicken and waffle skewers and cornmeal-crust deep dish pizza.
Foreign Cinema, named one of San Francisco's "Top 100" for two decades, emphasizes an outdoor dining experience where you can dig in to some of the best seafood in the city while watching your favorite films - like "The Goonies", for example - as they're displayed on the former warehouse's massive wall.
Tip: Call ahead and make your reservations: trust us, you don't want to miss out on the show.
Best time of year for a quick weekend visit to San Francisco: Summer can get a little busy in San Francisco, but the sun on the coast is worth it if you don't mind some crowds. Spring is kind of chilly, so the waning warmth of fall makes it a better transitional season. Winters are mild but rainy, so should you choose to visit then, pack an umbrella and warm clothes.
From classic arcades, to fortune cookie factories, to giant cameras that you can actually walk into, San Francisco is pretty much an oddball's dream destination. Now, you've got no excuse not to hit the steep streets of the Golden Gate City and experience all of its strangest shops, museums, and hotels on an adventure of your own.