Four Fabulous Days in San Franscico

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First, I have to say, I really, really, really wanted to title this trip "Four Fabulous Days in 'Frisco" but even more than I wanted that, I didn't want to deal with the comments I'd get about using the term "Frisco". Yeah, I know, nobody but tourists use "Frisco", but the alliteration would have been so much better, don't you think?

Here's a quick summary of the trip. Details on the following linked pages, Days 1-4.

Who we are:
We're a couple, both 40, who love to travel and we do at least one "big" trip a year. In July we're going to Vietnam so we decided to make Spring Break (my husband is a teacher) a shorter, smaller trip. For the second half of this trip we were joined by two close friends with whom we went to Rome on our last Spring Break.

Hotel: Sheraton Fisherman's Wharf.

Restaurants and Food:
We had four dinners; Aux Delices, SPQR, A16 and Delfina. We visited the Farmer's Market at the Ferry Building and returned there on another day to have "happy hour" at the Hog Island Oyster Company. We had 2 museum lunches; the Moss Room at the CA Academy of Science and the Cafe at the De Young. We also had lunch at a very touristy Fisherman's Wharf restaurant (not great).

Sightseeing:
Ferry Building and Farmer's Market, Fisherman's Wharf, Flower Conservatory in Golden Gate Park, California Academy of Sciences Museum, De Young Museum, Legion of Honor Museum, and Alcatraz. Quick walk through Chinatown and Little Italy.

Transportation:
Southwest Airlines, Burbank to Oakland. BART into City. Bought a 7 day MUNI "Passport" for $24 a person which allowed us to ride cable cars, trams and buses all over the city all we wanted. We also took a few taxis and walked a lot too.

Maps
I bought the Streetwise San Francisco first but I wasn't happy with the level of detail or the fact that I could not easily put it in my pocket. Next, I bought the Pocket Pilot San Francisco map which, while laminated, folds up much smaller than the Streetwise map. Even though it doesn't cover as much of the city as Streetwise, it does have the street-level detail I like. Finally, I bought a $3 paper MUNI map which turned out to be the most useful map of the bunch.

Weather
We were there the second week of April. We were blessed with gorgeous, sunny, warm weather for the first three days and didn't even need the coats we'd brought during the day (but did wear them at night). On the last day it dumped rain for most of the morning and then we were treated to a stunning rainbow over the Bay Bridge.

Research
Fodor's message board for the US. I also heavily relied on Chowhound for restaurant research and searched Yelp for reviews as well. I did not buy a guidebook.

Start the trip with Day 1...

or

Start with the Tidbits and Links page and see all the cool things I found about San Francisco.

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