Can you believe it's been a month since I went to San Francisco? While I don't necessarily miss the prices of most things, I do miss the abundant variety of fresh seafood (we all know I'm a sucker for mussels). We stayed for 6 days in the city, but in the future I would recommend staying a long weekend. The shopping and food are incredible, but if you don't have a car (and you shouldn't; reference below) there's only so many times you can visit Pier 39. Here's hoping you use my tips when you take your next trip!
Trip Guide: San Francisco
Don't Drive It
Leave that to the locals, trust me. Who wants to worry about finding a place to park on a 45 degree-angled road? Sounds more stressful than it's worth if you ask me. San Francisco is perfectly walkable depending on where you're staying and how much you love hills. We stayed in Union Square and were able to walk back from Pier 39 with ease...well at least we got a good workout! If you need to get somewhere in a pinch there is always Uber, but we actually enjoyed the public transportation, too! We took a bus from Market Street to Golden Gate Park and round-trip it only cost us $2.50 each. Such a deal!
Plan Ahead Where to Eat
We made the silly mistake of thinking San Francisco would be like Paris in that there is a local restaurant on every corner...not the case, unfortunately. One night we spent
45 minutes trying to find somewhere to eat that wasn't $30 a plate. Here's another weird thing about this city: all the good local restaurants are in alleyways, not the main streets. We went to so many great places, like
Hops & Hominy and basically any place on Belden Place (my favorites were
Plouf and
Sauce). Planning ahead is nice because then you're not so hungry you settle for Chipotle just because it's around the corner from your hotel!
Fried Chicken from Hops and Hominy
Eat ALL the Seafood
There is nothing better than fresh seafood, and in San Francisco it can't get much fresher. We ate fresh crab, mussels, shrimp, fish...it was all SO delicious and worth every penny. The best seafood we had was at Pier 39 in Fisherman's Wharf, of course. There are so many restaurants along the pier that boast about their fresh catches of the day. At the
Eagle Cafe my mom ordered the crab omelette and let me tell you -- it was pretty amazing. Then there's
Boudin Bakery where you can get an amazing bread bowl full of fresh clam chowder; and if you walk down a little farther on the wharf you'll find their flagship bakery where you can take a tour of how their signature sourdough bread is made!
Fresh Crab Roll from Sauce
Go to Alcatraz, But Get There Early
I cannot recommend Alcatraz enough. It was one of the coolest places I ever visited and if it wasn't so haunted I'd live there forever. The best tip I can give you about Alcatraz is to
book the first boat out there in the morning (the 8:45). We were sad when the night tours were fully booked, but in the end this saved us a lot of trouble (and money). Being on the first boat, we were of course the first group to make it to the island. That meant that we got to see everything first and the amount of people walking through was minimal. With Alcatraz, there is no set time limit that you have to explore the island, you could stay there all day if you wanted to! Which is why it's so nice to be one of the first people on the tour so you get to experience everything first before the rest of the boats start dropping off more people. Here's another tip:
don't follow the audio tour word by word. I noticed that as we followed the step-by-step audio guide, everyone was following the same pattern. Stop at Cell 131, look inside, yada yada yada. I eventually took off my headphones and told my mom to sneak away with me, and that's how we were able to see some of the coolest spots no one else explored! We walked around the dining hall, found our way around spiral staircases, and were even able to walk around the recreation yard where Al Capone himself used to go out to! Sometimes it's nice to not follow the rules, but we still finished our audio tour to get the full experience. Just beware of the birds!
Alcatraz Island
Other Tips
When walking back from the Wharf to Union Square, take Powell as it is far less steep than some of the other streets. Chinatown is just around the corner of Union Square on Grant Ave, so don't Uber it! You can walk back and forth in the main part of Chinatown just by walking. Lastly, find a good hotel. We stayed at the Sir Francis Drake and while it was a very classy hotel, it had some problems. The customer service was awful (they still haven't refunded our money from a false room-service charge), the elevators took FOREVER to arrive to your floor and were very small, and appliances in our room would randomly stop working properly. It may be historic, but it shows. Next time I would probably stay at a Hilton -- at least I'd get a free cookie!
Jumping for Joy in the Alcatraz Rec Yard
Hope these little tips and tricks help you on your next vacation. Send me pictures!
