San Francisco
San Francisco is known the world over for its beauty, its open-mindedness and iconic sites like the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, not to mention its charming cable cars. But there's so much more to this storied city than just its most recognizable features, incredible as they may be. And – let's be honest – San Francisco is a city known and loved just as much for its weirdness, quirk and distinct personality.
Regularly ranked as the greenest city in North America, San Francisco is awash with parks, gardens and pockets of green space. But this being San Fran, each one has its own personality from the bonsai and buffalo of Golden Gate Park to the secluded Shakespeare Garden, a flower-filled spot where young couples head to smooch.
Hip, happy and uninhibited, San Francisco is where America comes to let down its hair – and where better to unwind after a busy day of sightseeing than on one of the city’s gorgeous beaches? San Francisco has city beaches, wild beaches, sporty beaches, family beaches, beaches for watching the sun sink slowly into the Pacific, and, of course, nude beaches – this is San Francisco after all!
San Francisco’s magnificent museums honor its close links to Asia as well as the tech hub’s quirky love of science and progress. You'll find museums here tracing the city’s history from its earliest days, when the bay was filled with sailing ships bringing gold-seekers to America, as well as its idiosyncratic history over the intervening centuries.
Famously beautiful, San Francisco is one of the most filmed, photographed (and shared on social networks) cities in the world. It’s even better in real life.
With a much-deserved reputation for being costly, San Francisco and the entire Bay Area regularly top the charts of the USA’s most expensive places to live.
