San Francisco is a popular international tourist destination renowned for its chilly summer fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of Victorian and modern architecture and its famous landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, the cable cars, and Chinatown.
Pier 39
Pier 39 is a shopping center and popular tourist attraction built on a pier in San Francisco, California. At Pier 39, there are shops, restaurants, a video arcade, street performances, an interpretive center for the Marine Mammal Center, the Aquarium of the Bay, virtual 3D rides, and views of California sea lions hauled out on docks on Pier 39's marina.
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is acclaimed as one of the world's most beautiful bridges and with its tremendous towers, sweeping main cables and great span, it is a sensory beauty featuring color, sound, and light. The Bridge can be a very busy place, particularly during the summer months. It is estimated that about nine million people from around the world visit the Bridge each year.
Chinatown
San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America. It is also the largest Chinese community outside of Asia, according to The New Encyclopaedia Britannica. Established in the 1850s, it has featured significantly in popular culture venues such as film, music, photography and literature. It is one of the largest and most prominent centres of Chinese activity outside of China.
Alcatraz Island
Alcatraz and history go hand in hand. Once home to some of America's most notorious criminals, the federal penitentiary that operated here from 1934 to 1963 brought a dark mystique to the Rock. The presence of infamous inmates like Al "Scarface" Capone, and the "Birdman" Robert Stroud helped to establish the island's notoriety. To this day, Alcatraz is best known as one of the world's most legendary prisons.
Union Square
Union Square San Francisco is the United States' third-largest shopping area. Union Square became San Francisco's shopping epi-center in the early 1900s and today, upscale stores and hotels surround Union Square, and shopping extends blocks from the central plaza.
Coit Tower
Coit Tower was build in 1933 at the summit of Telegraph Hill as a monument to San Francisco's volunteer firefighters. Legend says that the 210 foot tower's fluted walls and porticoed observation deck were made to resemble the nozzle of a firehose, but its architect Arthur Brown insisted that was not his intention.
Russian Hill
Recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the "Crookedest Street in the World," Lombard Street between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets on Russian Hill contains eight sharp turns or switchbacks. The design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry and instituted in 1922, was born out of necessity in order to reduce the hill's natural twenty-seven degree slope which was too steep for most vehicles to climb and a serious hazard to pedestrians to a more reasonable sixteen degree incline.
Transamerica Pyramid
A lot of protest came from the citizens of San Francisco when the plans for the new buildings of the Transamerica Company were unveiled in 1969. Most people claimed that the pyramid-shaped skyscraper wouldn't fit in the city. The Pyramid was finished in 1972 and having a height of 260 meters, towers out over the rest of the city. It has 48 floors with a 64 meters high spire on top, covered with aluminum panels.
>Haight-Ashbury
In 1967, the Summer of Love put the dilapidated San Francisco neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury forever in the history books as the epicenter of the anti-establishment hippie movement which sought peace, love, understanding...and drugs. Haight-Ashbury was also the home to the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane.
