There are over six million people in the San Francisco area, with 750,000 in the Bay Area itself. Nestled within that vast sea of individuals is a conclave known around the world as Chinatown. Most large U.S. cities (and many outside) have a ‘Chinatown’. But, including even New York, the most authentic is unquestionably that of San Francisco.
One of the most popular tourist destinations in San Francisco, Fisherman’s Wharf alone has enough to see and do to consume the entire vacation.
The area is one of the stopping points of the famous cable car rides and houses a Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum, the Aquarium of the Bay at Pier 39, the USS Pampanito Submarine Museum and gobs of other attractions.
In 1937, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in the White House. That simple action officially announced an event much of the world was already anticipating: the opening of The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. After four years of construction and a cost of millions of dollars and many lives, one of the world’s greatest bridges had been born.
At over 1,000 acres Golden Gate Park is larger than Central Park in Manhattan. And, no less impressive too!
In one of the busiest cities anywhere, visitors can enjoy archery, basketball, biking, skating and a host of other activities. There are tennis courts, a golf course, even flycasting pools.
Chinatown isn’t San Francisco’s only culturally distinct neighborhood. From an area uptown near the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets sprawls “The Haight”. Several blocks of record shops, restaurants, antique stores and more, it still bears the look and feel of the mid-60s ‘Hippie Revolution’.
EXPLORATORIUM
Founded by Frank Oppenheimer, the brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer and himself a physicist, the Exploratorium contains over 650 exhibits that can’t be properly described – they have to be experienced.
Almost all are interactive and hands-on. There’s the Tactile Dome, where you make your way along a dark maze entirely by feeling the walls made of various textures. There’s a small ‘experiment’ in which you can find out what a tornado is like by feeling it. But far from focusing only on touch, this unusual ‘museum’ excites all the senses and the mind.
From its magnificent bayside vistas to the intimate cafes, San Francisco offers a visit par excellence.
Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge may be the city’s two most well known attractions – and well deserving of their reputations – but the city at the lower edge of Northern California offers much more.
San Francisco is a tourist’s delight for those seeking a mixture of old and new. One of the best examples of that contrast is Union Square.
Built in 1847, the square was designated from the outset as a public plaza. A $25 million renovation, completed in 2002, has brought the area to its current high point.
Sited at the shore of Lake Michigan, the John G. Shedd Aquarium is widely acknowledged to be among the world’s finest. Home to more than 650 species of fish, reptile, amphibians, birds and mammals, they have over 8,000 individual animals from around the world.
Since 1930, the collection has grown to include a 90,000 coral reef exhibit, whale and dolphin habitats, an Amazon display, penguins and much more.
For many years the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Sears Tower is really nine buildings combined into one massive structure. Completed in 1974, it was erected to consolidate offices housing 6,500 Sears employees from all over the city.
Close to the famed Chicago ‘L’, the elevated train and Chicago Transit Authority buses, it would have been taller but the Federal Aviation Authority was concerned about plane safety on routes to and from O’Hare.
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