The following is a list of random things to do in San Francisco, with
some markings for what they are and how touristy they are. SF is a
wonderful city to walk around, but do be prepared to climb some steep
hills depending on where you go.
Touristy fish market with many touristy restaurants
Touristy shopping pier, lots of small shops selling everything from
kites to fudge to jewelry.
Start at Powell/Mason Cable Car Turnaround
Expect to wait in a line if you want to ride it during the day. The cars run until about 11 PM and are much less crowded in the evening. Fare is $8.
There are also heritage streetcars on the F line that runs along Market St and then up the Embarcadero to Fisherman's Wharf. Regular Muni fare on a Clipper card or the phone app, usually $2.50.
SF has a well known China Town full of shops and restaurants. 1.5 km walk away.
A 210 ft tall tower that has stood above the city since its inauguration in 1934. The Art-deco style tower is surrounded by a nearly 5-acre park, Pioneer Park, and offers a 360-degree view of the entire city, the bay, the Golden Gate, and Alcatraz
Museum is open, some parts like the pier at the end are closed.
If you enjoy old sea-going ships, this is an excellent museum and set
of ships you can walk around. Wes was once lucky enough to sleep over
night on the Balclutha, a three-masted, steel-hulled, square-rigged
ship built to carry a variety of cargo all over the world.
https://www.nps.gov/safr/planyourvisit/index.htm
Have you ever wanted to Run Silent, Run Deep? You can tour a WW II US diesel submarine. It's authentic, down to the cramped, smelly quarters. Access is by ladder only.
https://maritime.org/uss-pampanito/
SF has many museums that are worth visiting. Here are but a few:
A very hands-on science museum, great for children / families. This is now in an old pier building.
https://www.exploratorium.edu/
Fine art.
Focused almost exclusively on European art and has small, well curated collection in a magificent building overlooking the Golden Gate
https://www.famsf.org/visit/legion-of-honor
Wes thinks this is one of the best hidden things in SF. It contains arcade type history games from the old "shock yourself" games up to some more modern classics like pac-man and defender. Located near fisherman's wharf.
Haven’t been here, but it looks very cool for a short visit
A Natural History museum
We had an IETF social here in the past. They have fascinating exhibits including a planetarium, a green roof, kids areas / dinosaurs, actual natural research areas, an area with traditional 19th centory stuffed animal exhibits (from the museums earlier days), a big and diverse aquarium, and a multi-story greenhouse where you get extremely close to all type of fun critter.
We have the 117 social there already, but if you are into modern art, check out the exhibitions online, there is a lot we will not have access to during the social. But beyond what we are given access to (which is a good part of the permanent exhibition), much is changing over time. I have not checked the current exhibitions. Quality varies widely over time.
https://www.aquariumofthebay.org/
An actual museum about Walt Disney's life/work history. Should work well for family visit, but probably teenagers and up. But maybe park smaller kids in the museums movie theater showing 101 Dalmatians at 2PM https://www.waltdisney.org/calendar
This museum is in the presidio park adjacent to Golden Gate Bridge, which is also great for hiking / bicycling.
1.7km one-way walk. Not much to see once there, but still a nice walk to the bay shore. Contains shops and restaurants including a nice bookstore on the harbor side, Mariposa Bakery inside, which sells wonderful allergy-friendlu baked goods, and Cowgirl Creamery, also inside. Also, you can take actual ferries to Sausalito and north, and points in the East Bay.
Routes and schedules: https://sfport.com/ferry
Apparently there is a fountain of Yoda outside of the Letterman Digital Arts Center.
(This is near the LucasFilm offices in Presido.)
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/yoda-fountain
Iconic winding street (but only one block of it is winding). Often has a line of cars waiting to drive down it. Powell cable car stops at the top of the winding block.
Two winding labyrinths supposedly (Wes hasn't been there)
Did you know that there's a civil war fort tucked underneath the Golden Gate Bridge?
https://www.nps.gov/fopo/index.htm
Iconic row of Victorians next to a popular park
If you want food from any Latin American country, this is the neighborhood to go. Famous for murals and the Mission style burrito. Short BART ride away.
For chocolate lovers. In Mission, near Dolores Park.
The San Francisco Marathon, half marathon, 10K and 5K are the weekend before the IETF, with most events on Sunday 23rd July. For details and registration see https://www.thesfmarathon.com/. Note that race bibs need to be collected on the Friday or Saturday.
There is a related traffic advisory for the event - https://www.thesfmarathon.com/race-weekend/traffic-advisory/.
There are a lot of old army batteries that were responsible for
defending the shoreline years ago. You can walk around many of them,
but the interiors are generally closed off. If you want to go, look
on maps near the ocean They are in Presidio park all the way along the coastline and then also some easy to access ones in Lincoln park (further south) where Legion of Honors is.
The central park for San Franciscans. Hosts the De Young Museum, San Francisco Academy of Sciences, San Francisco Botanical Gardens, Japanese Tea Garden, Sports Stadium, A lake with boating, a caroussel, Conservatory of Flowers, a bison herd, a windmill - and more. On weekends it is almost impossible for there not to be some type of local event too. Or else just have a picknick on one of the many green areas.
Can well be explored by bicycle, and great for hiking or running as well. Sundays the park is (mostly) closed off to cars.
The following three gardens in Golden Gate Park now also have a common ticket and are together a good option for a day trip to the park:
https://www.japaneseteagardensf.com/
Large beautiful greenhouse. Great if its not warm outside (as often happens in San Francisco).
https://conservatoryofflowers.org/
Obviously a well known landmark. Lots of people enjoy walking across
the eastern side, or even renting bikes and biking across:
There are various bicycle rental places such as near Pier 39 (tourist area). You can then bicycle across Golden Gate Bridge (bicycling is separate from walking on the western walkway). Drive to Sausalito, have fun there - then return on a boat to Pier 39 and return the bicycle. Note that on weekends the bicycle line for the boats can be quite long, so plan to be at the line an hour early.
There are a number of beaches to visit, and the further west you go the bigger the waves get generally. Ocean beach is a big long strip of beach that is popular but so big there aren't endless people on it. The other beaches just east of the golden gate facing the bridge can get you good views of the bridge and the bay.
Warning: the pacific ocean is COLD and also frequently has an undercurrent -- if you want to swim, check the signs first. Wet suit recommended and don't go alone.
17 miles which can be walked, run or biked in sections. Only 4 years old
https://crosstowntrail.org/
One of Wes' favorite places to hike and see the shoreline. Going across Golden Gate is the MUST do when you get a rented car over the weekend.
Itself a city of 120,000 people and a major university town, Berkeley has many affordable and good resturants downtown and along Shattuck. The University has a botanical garden and the Lawrence Hall of Science.
Evans Hall is the statistics, economics and mathematics building. It served as the gateway to the entire west coast's ARPAnet access in the early stages of Internet (56 kbps line to Chicago.)
This pier was originally built (before there were bridges) to connect to the ferry to San Francisco. Cars were asked to drive 60 Mph to quickly get to the ferry - 100 years ago. More than half of it is broken away now, but it is still a fun walk into the bay.
If you missed going to a sake tasking in Yokohma, and are still mad about that, go to Sakara Sake tasting room in Berkeley:
https://www.takarasake.com/visit-us/sake-tasting-room
THE iconic prison. It will take at least half a day to get there and
back by ferry. And you need to book early!
Leaves from pier 33
https://www.nps.gov/alca/index.htm
Muir Woods is a very famous but small redwood forest. It requires reservations in advance for parking in particular. And there is no cell phone signals there so you MUST make them ahead of time and bring them with you. It's a fairly small park, but does contain big towering trees and if you get out of the main loop in the valley floor you can get a good 4-5 mile hike in if you plan it right.
Alternatively the East Bay has Redwood Regional Park.
This is about an hour away in Mountain View in what was originally Silicon Graphics headquarters.
Very little networking gear on display even though the place is official keeper of Cisco history (seemingly most of it is not on exhibit publically - yet ?).
Among other gems, there is a Babbage machine, an IBM 1401, even the original google server https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102662167. Museum staff has mostly been into restoring old IBM gear though.
If you venture beyond the museum down the stret towards shoreline park you can see the new Google campus headquarter building on the left.
https://museum.stanford.edu/ About an hour by Caltrain from the 4th and Townsend station, or about an hour by car. This is on Stanford campus and can be used to also explore Stanford campus. Free, reservation required.
Has the Gates of Hell in the garden as part of the "Rodin garden" exhibition . More Rodin sculptures at the main Stanford entrance. And if you still have not had enough of Rodin, go to Legion of Honors in San Francisco.
Since ca. 7 years, there is a new museum "Anderson Collection" with great modern art directly next door to the Cantor. Sometimes its also used as overflow / temporary for San Francisco modern art (whenever they need to do renovations in San Francisco).
https://movementgyms.com/san-francisco/
The Alameda island is off Oakland, across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. It is mostly flat.
The USS Hornett, an old airplane carrier has been converted into a museum where one can see the engine room, catapults, tower, brig, a number of planes on multiple decks. There is also an exhibition about the moon landing as this ship recovered the astonauts when they came back from the moon.
Next to the USS Hornett are a brewery, a distillery and a winery that all can be visited/tasted.
Also note that the Matrix movie freeway chase was filmed in the area. They were trying to rent a portion of freeway but nobody was interested, so they said "f*** it, let's build one." A large portion of Alameda is an old naval base, so they could start from a runway and converted into a 2 km 2x3 lanes freeway for $2.5M. ESC Entertainment which did many of the Matrix 2 and 3 effects had its offices next to it.