A Perfect day in San Francisco!

March 25, 2016 by nikirath 45 Comments

Can San Francisco be explored in a day? Yes, it can! I have done it. Here are a few highlights of the city that I enjoyed in just one day.

Golden Gate Bridge

Our day in the city began with the beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point. We enjoyed our walk along the pathways by the Pacific Ocean down the stairs all the way to catch scenic views at the bottom of the trail. I wish I was wearing more comfortable shoes, I wasn’t really prepared for a trail in the middle of the city. Nevertheless I had a great time. The ocean was perfect for surfing with huge waves and I caught a glimpse of a surfer swim on his board towards the strong tides.

Golden Gate Park

After enjoying the views of the Golden Gate Bridge we drove to the Golden Gate Park which was about twenty minutes’ drive. To my surprise the drive was very scenic with huge trees on our way with winding roads. That I think is the beauty of California, lot of surprises my way. We parked our car and made our way to the garden which was huge. It started with the rose garden, tea garden and then we finally reached the main area which has famous museums surrounded by lush greenery. My favorite was the huge palm trees which I hugged so tight 🙂

Union Square

By the time we were walking out of the Golden Gate Park, we were hungry and ready for a delicious lunch. So our next stop was Union square which is the Downtown area of San Francisco.  At this point we parked our car in one of the public parking garage by our hotel because finding parking in downtown is calling danger.We relished the authentic Indian buffet at ‘The Amber’ which had great variety of options in their lunch buffet and also was very appetizing.

After our lunch, I was very excited to ride the cable car which was one of the adventures in my bucket list. Cable car is one of the oldest way of commute in history and San Francisco is one of the very few places to still have it. The drivers have to manually rotate the cable car to ride the opposite way. It was a wait of more than one hour but completely worth it. We rode up the steep hilly roads of San Francisco city with our heads hanging out of the cable car which was quite an adventure. We rode the cable car towards our next spot and that was Fisherman’s Wharf.

Fisherman’s Wharf

I don’t know what that was but I always imagined Fisherman’s Wharf to be this beautiful place in San Francisco that everyone goes to. It turned out to be completely opposite of what I imagined. It was beautiful no doubt but it was very crowded and smoky. It was more of a tourist trap with shops around and crowded street performances around. To be honest I wasn’t able to enjoy much there because of the swarming tourists over the weekend. Probably would have been better over the weekdays.

The only thing I liked in the Fishermen’s Wharf was the Ghirardelli Square where you could actually watch how chocolate is made from scratch using raw cocoa. It was great experience to know how chocolate is processed.

 Lombard Street

Quick but not easy walk up the hill from Ghirardelli Square took us to the Lombard Street which is a steep winding street. It is one of its own kind and one of the must see stops in San Francisco. While other people were driving down the Lombard Street, we walked up the stairs to finally reach the top. The funny part was our Uber cab driver that we called to go back to the hotel was very kind to drive us down the Lombard Street. So we got to ride down the steepest winding street, yayy!

China Town

After relaxing in the hotel for an hour or so, we then went to China town for dinner which was just a few minutes of walk from our hotel. We enjoyed the Chinese food there and the jasmine tea which I still remember which was such a bliss after the long day 🙂

We crunched in everything in a day because we just had one day in San Francisco. End of the day I was contended to explore an awesome city full of surprises.

Things to do:

Explore explore explore

Hiking at the Fort Point

Ride Cable Car

Drive down Lombard Street

Places to Eat:

Amber (Indian)

Hunan Home’s Restaurant(Chinese)