Brian Childress
- Jun 12, 2021
- 2 min read

San Francisco, California

Updated: Sep 9, 2021

San Francisco (Spanish for "Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a cultural, commercial, and financial center in Northern California. San Francisco is the 16th most populous city in the United States, and the fourth most populous in California, with 881,549 residents as of 2019. It covers an area of about 46.89 square miles, mostly at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city, and the fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is part of the 12th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States by population, with 4.7 million people, and the fourth-largest by economic output, with GDP of $592 billion in 2019. With San Jose, it forms the fifth most populous combined statistical area in the United States, with 9.67 million residents as of 2019. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include SF, San Fran, The City, and Frisco.

A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, and its Chinatown district.

We added this city as a place to visit because of the various activities to do and see in and around San Francisco. When we visited it, we spent 5 days there and were able to see the following sights and still get in a NFL 49ers game.

Things to do and see:

Golden Gate Bridge

Ride the world famous cable cars

Coit Tower

Alcatraz Island

Fisherman’s Wharf

Walk through China Town

Muir Woods

SF Fine Arts Museum

Presidio Park - former military base

Golden Gate Park

Catch a Giants baseball game