"San Francisco: Colorful and Charming " a San Francisco Travel Page by frannykt

San Francisco's architecture is one of its most distinctive traits. The Golden Gate bridge, its hills of colourfully stacked houses are immediate points of recognition.

The city is on the northmost part of "the Peninsula," which juts out from the rest of the California and reaches up to the mouth of the San Francisco bay. San Francisco and the rest of "the Bay Area" are considered Northern California (in reality, San Francisco is almost exactly in the center of the state) because it's the largest city before you hit Oregon and because the weather is distinctive to the Pacific Northwest. Particularly in San Francisco, the weather is very temperate - almost perpetual "sweater weather." Often the city is overcast in fog or "the marine layer" - mist which pours into the city from the ocean.

Relative to New York City or Chicago, San Francisco is quite small, both in population and square miles; however, relative to Los Angeles and San Jose, San Francisco is California's truest city. It has its Financial District, its Chinatown, Golden Gate Park (with the Arboretum and charming Japanese Tea Gardens), the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) which is small, but hosts lovely pieces from Ansel Adams to Rothko to Jackson Pollock. The Art and Architecture of San Francisco varies from the monumental Trans-America Building to the small, but meaningful Coit Tower.

The San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas are both gorgeous. If you want to see something outside of the city, I highly recommend renting a car and driving down to Monterey and Carmel during your trip to Northern California.

San Francisco's central shopping district - complete with flagship stores - is Union Square. You will find native San Francisco retailers like Williams-Sonoma and Gap, as well as global fashion designers. Union Square runs adjacent to the Financial District and the Theatre district, )I recommend the Curran or Orpheum theatres for the most popular and well-done shows. The theatres are ornate and beautiful and host such shows as Les Miserables, the Lion King, and Wicked.

Outside of the traditional shopping and theatre districts, San Francisco has other colorful neighborhoods - such as the Haight.

The Haight is not the cleanest district, but it is one of the most authentic. It has hole-in-the-wall cuisine, record, and book stores, thrift and vintage shopping, as well as some of the most distinctive trends in shopping.