San Francisco, the Bay City

The treats of San Francisco are not just for locals. The basic pleasures of life here – wonderful food, sparkling nightlife and those glorious views – are there for everyone. Watch the white fog fill the Golden Gate as the sunset lights up the windows across the bay, and prepare to leave your heart.

The best way to explore San Francisco's neighbourhoods is on foot. Take a look at the following descriptions of each of the cities varied and interesting neighbourhoods.

Downtown San Francisco's densely populated downtown is squeezed into the hilly north-eastern corner of the peninsula. The often dramatic cityscape came about because the streets were laid out as if their planners had never so much as glanced at the city's topography. They simply dropped a grid pattern onto the steeply undulating terrain, and the result is that streets often climb or drop at ridiculously steep gradients. It makes parking hazardous, breeds bicycle messengers of superhuman strength and provides a hairy setting for car chase scenes in movies. Union Square is San Francisco's downtown tourist centre. It's a mishmash of glitzy shops and hotels, flower vendors and homeless people. Cable cars rumble down the west side of the square; try looking down Hyde St towards Aquatic Park, down Washington St to Chinatown and the Financial District, or down California from Nob Hill. And if you're in Nob Hill, you've just got to ride the elevator to the Top of the Mark, the famous view bar at the top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. SoMa ('South of Market St') is a combination of lofty office buildings spilling over from the Financial District, fancy condos along the Embarcadero, a touristy gallery and museum precinct around Yerba Buena Gardens and the late night entertainment scene along Folsom and 11th Sts. While in the area of Russian Hill check out Lombard Street it is the world’s crookedest street. What does this mean? The steep, hilly street was created with sharp curves to switchback down the one-way hill past beautiful Victorian mansions. The street is paved with bricks and is an amazing site to see. If not for the Byzantine curves, easing out this treacherous slope, people would be killed rolling down.

Chinatown A few blocks north of Union Square is Chinatown, the most densely packed pocket of the city and one of its most colourful. The tacky curio shops along Grant Avenue are monuments to the role tourism plays in the neighbourhood, but the 30,000 Chinese - most of whom speak Cantonese as their first language - live in a tightly-knit, distinctly un-Western community. It's a great place for casual wandering through narrow alleys, where on quiet afternoons you can hear the clack of mah jong tiles from behind screen doors. The most colourful time to visit Chinatown is during the Chinese New Year in late January or early February, with a parade and fireworks and other festivities.

North Beach North Beach is sandwiched between Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf. It's a lively stretch of strip joints, bars, cafes and restaurants that started as the city's Italian quarter and gave birth to the Beats in the 1950s - City Lights Bookstore is here, at the corner of Columbus Ave and Jack Kerouac Alley. The neighbourhood is hemmed in on the east by Telegraph Hill, which features tree-shaded stairways that ramble down the steep eastern face of the hill, and Coit Tower. One of the city's most famous landmarks, the tower is a prime spot to let loose your postcard-vista voyeurism. The 360° views from here are superb.

Fishermans Wharf The much-maligned but massively popular Fisherman's Wharf is directly north of Russian Hill. There's no getting away from the Wharf's unspeakable kitschiness, but it's still fun. Packed with shopping centres, hockey museums and countless accommodations, it's also the gateway for several top attractions (Alcatraz, the Maritime Museum and the Historic Ships Pier). Pier 39 is the area's focal point - it's become as popular with a colony of sea lions as it is with tourists.

Haight-Ashbury Keep on going southwest of downtown and you'll hit Haight-Ashbury ('the Haight'), the locus of San Francisco's brief fling as the home of flower power in the late 1960s. Today, the Haight is still colourful, but its pretty Victorian houses and proximity to Golden Gate Park have prompted increasing gentrification. The compact Castro, to the southeast, is the gay centre of San Francisco and one of the best neighbourhoods for strolling and watching the street life.

Golden Gate Park Golden Gate Park stretches almost halfway across the 6 mile (10km) wide peninsula, from the Pacific Ocean to the Haight's Panhandle. Apart from gardens (including a flower conservatory and a charming Japanese tea garden), lakes (rowboats, pedal boats and motor boats can all be rented), sporting facilities (including horse riding, archery, softball, golf, lawn bowling, horseshoe pitching and petanque), the park also has a host of museums and an aquarium, making it a useful escape even when the fog rolls in and the temperature plummets. The city has plenty of other wide open spaces. Lincoln Park Coastal Trail is an interesting walk from the ruins of the Sutro Baths at Ocean Beach to the north-western tip of the city, known as Lands End; there are some great views of the ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge. South of Golden Gate Park, the city's hilly terrain makes its final skyward lunges at Twin Peaks and Mt Sutro. The 900ft (270m) summit of Twin Peaks offers a superb viewpoint over the whole Bay Area, especially at night. There are viewpoints at both ends of the Golden Gate Bridge, but Vista Point, the northern one, not only gives you the bridge, but the San Francisco skyline as well.

San Francisco Bay San Francisco's bay is curiously shy. It always seems to be around the corner, glimpsed in the distance, seen from afar. It is spanned by bridges, surrounded by cities and suede hills, dotted with sails and crisscrossed by fast-moving ferries. The bay is the largest inlet on the California coast, stretching about 60 miles (100km) in length and up to 12 miles (20km) in width. The beautiful Golden Gate Bridge crosses the 2 mile (3km) mouth of the bay. Completed in 1937, the bridge remains the symbol of the city despite competition from modern constructions. At the time of its completion, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world and the 746ft (224m) suspension towers were higher than any structure west of New York City. The Bay Bridge, connecting San Francisco and Oakland, is five times as long as the Golden Gate Bridge, carries far more traffic and predates it by six months, but it's never had the same iconic fame. The bay's other attractions include Alcatraz Island, which operated as an 'escape-proof' prison from 1933 to 1963. Al Capone, 'Machine Gun' Kelly and Robert Stroud, the 'birdman of Alcatraz,' were among the prison's unsavoury residents. North of Alcatraz, Angel Island served as an internment camp during WWII; it's now a popular place for walking, hiking, biking, picnics and camping. Both islands are accessible by ferry from Fisherman's Wharf and the Embarcadero.