San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau 201 Third Street #900 San Francisco, CA 94103-3185 (415) 391-2000 Population 723959 Time Zone Pacific Latitude/Longitude 37.78° /-122.42° Today's Forecast HIGH: 73 LOW: 58

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Attractions

It is easy to explore San Francisco's diverse neighborhoods on foot. In the Mission District, search out the Murals of the Mission, taquerias, and the restored, 18th-century Mission Dolores. For a different cultural flavor, you can seek out the restaurants, cafes, Italian flavor and Beat history of North Beach, situated right next to the Financial District and Chinatown, with its narrow streets and dim sum restaurants.

Continue your eclectic, multicultural journey at the hip dance and jazz clubs of SoMa (South of Market), the shops and restaurants of the Embarcadero Center, the psychedelic Haight Ashbury, and the colorful Castro. The bay views and mansions of Pacific Heights and Japantown's Nihonmachi Mall, a replica of a traditional Japanese village, will round off your tour of San Francisco's unique neighborhoods.

At the Civic Center, you will find the outstanding Asian Art Museum of San Francisco as well as the Performing Arts Center with its striking Davies Symphony Hall, War Memorial Opera House, where the United Nations Treaty was signed in 1945, and the Herbst Theatre in the Veterans Building. A tour of San Francisco's excellent museums should also include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the art collections at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Wells Fargo History Museum, and the Exploratorium, a top-rated science museum located in the historic Palace of Fine Arts.

For a sweeping view of the bay, climb Telegraph Hill to 210-foot-tall Coit Tower, which also boasts excellent Depression-era murals. Take a cable car to the intersection of California and Powell streets for a superb view down Nob Hill to the bay. To see just how those romantic cable cars work, be sure to stop by the San Francisco Cable Car Museum to tour the sheave rooms where the underground cables wind and unwind. Twin Peaks in the center of the city also offers a splendid 360-degree view.

Along the historic waterfront, visitors can explore Fisherman's Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, the Cannery at Del Monte Square, and Pier 39, each a waterfront marketplace with specialty shops, restaurants, galleries, live entertainment, and, in the case of Pier 39, sun-bathing sea-lions. Stop by the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park to learn about the heyday of sailing ships and San Francisco's relationship to the sea and to tour the historic ships docked at Hyde Street Pier.

San Francisco has a wealth of fine parks. At Golden Gate Park, enjoy picnicking, biking, jogging, and in-line skating. Visit the de Young Museum in its stunning new building and the California Academy of Sciences, consisting of the Natural History Museum, Steinhart Aquarium, and Morrison Planetarium, all of which receive new quarters in 2008. The park's vast expanses also embrace the Strybing Arboretum and Botanical Garden, the Japanese Tea Garden, a golf course, windmills, a rowing lake, stables, fly-fishing ponds, and a buffalo paddock.

Another scenic and recreational treasure is the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which encompasses most of the shoreline of San Francisco, as well as the Presidio and Alcatraz Island, the erstwhile high-security prison. Excursion boats to the island leave from Fisherman's Wharf.

Major league sports here take the shape of the NFL's 49ers who play at the once again renamed Monster Park on Candlestick Point, and the San Francisco Giants who play baseball at AT&T Park, the attractive bayside stadium that opened in 2000.

For a remarkable glimpse of what the Northern California coast must have looked like for thousands of years before settlers arrived, take a short drive north over the Golden Gate Bridge, then stand in awe among the mighty redwoods preserved at Muir Woods National Monument.

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