Frommer's San Francisco 2012 - Matthew Poole [25]
DECEMBER
The Nutcracker, War Memorial Opera House, Civic Center. The San Francisco Ballet ( 415/865-2000) performs this Tchaikovsky classic annually. (It was actually the first ballet company in America to do so.) Order tickets to this holiday tradition well in advance. Visit www.sfballet.org for information.
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SAN FRANCISCO NEIGHBORHOODS & SUGGESTED ITINERARIES
The Powell–Market cable car travels between Fisherman's Wharf and Powell and Market streets.
If you’ve left your brain at the office and want someone else to make all the tough decisions during your vacation, you’ll love this chapter. It’s where I tell you what I think you should see and do during your vacation in San Francisco. It’s broken down into 1-day, 2-day, and 3-day sections, depending on how long you’re in town. If you’ve already made your way through “The Best of San Francisco in 1 Day,” the 2-day tour starts where the 1-day schedule left off, and so on. But if you really want to enjoy even a fraction of what San Francisco has to offer, you should plan on staying at least 3 days, preferably a week. And because renting a car in the city is an expensive hassle (and driving in the city is insane), we’re going to do all our transportation via foot, bus, and bike. Right, then: Let’s get started.
City Layout
San Francisco occupies the tip of a 32-mile peninsula between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Its land area measures about 46 square miles, although the city is often referred to as being 7 square miles. At more than 900 feet high, towering Twin Peaks (which are, in fact, two neighboring peaks), mark the geographic center of the city and make a great place to take in a vista of San Francisco.
With lots of one-way streets, San Francisco might seem confusing at first, but it will quickly become easy to navigate. The city’s downtown streets are arranged in a simple grid pattern, with the exceptions of Market Street and Columbus Avenue, which cut across the grid at right angles to each other. Hills appear to distort this pattern, however, and can disorient you. As you learn your way around, the hills will become your landmarks and reference points.
MAIN ARTERIES & STREETS Market Street is San Francisco’s main thoroughfare. Most of the city’s buses travel this route on their way to the Financial District from the outer neighborhoods to the west and south. The tall office buildings clustered downtown are at the northeast end of Market; 1 block beyond lies the Embarcadero and the bay.
The Embarcadero ★—an excellent strolling, skating, and biking route (thanks to recent renovations)—curves along San Francisco Bay from south of the Bay Bridge to the northeast perimeter of the city. It terminates at Fisherman’s Wharf, the famous tourist-oriented pier. Aquatic Park, Fort Mason, and Golden Gate National Recreation Area are on the northernmost point of the peninsula.
From the eastern perimeter of Fort Mason, Van Ness Avenue runs due south, back to Market Street. The area just described forms a rough triangle, with Market Street as its southeastern boundary, the waterfront as its northern boundary, and Van Ness Avenue as its western boundary. Within this triangle lie most of the city’s main tourist sights.
FINDING AN ADDRESS Because most of the city’s streets are laid out in a grid pattern, finding an address is easy when you know the nearest cross street. Numbers start with 1 at the beginning of the street and proceed at the rate of 100 per block. When asking for directions, find out the nearest cross street and your destination’s neighborhood, but be careful not to confuse numerical avenues with numerical streets. Numerical avenues (Third Ave. and so on) are in the Richmond and Sunset districts in the western part of the city. Numerical streets (Third St. and so on) are south of Market Street in the east and south parts of town.
Neighborhoods in Brief
For further discussion of some of the neighborhoods below, see the “Neighborhoods Worth a Visit” section of chapter 6, beginning. Also see the “San Francisco