Mother/Daughter San Francisco Trip
 

Hi all,

I recently graduated from college and my mom and I are planning a four day trip to San Francisco June 11-15 to celebrate my new job and graduation. We are from Chicago and it will be our first time to San Francisco.

We are coming in at 9am on Saturday morning, and leaving at 5pm on Tuesday, staying at the Hotel Monaco.

Any suggestions for things to do? We like shopping in boutique areas, not chain stores, and are looking for some good restaurants around the area. We like to splurge but we also love to find a good deal!

As for sightseeing, any recommendations for tours that would help us see the city? I saw Mr. Toad's...any suggestions on that?

Thank you so much! Can't wait to get to San Francisco!

Molly

Congrats on your graduation and getting a job so quickly.
I'm sure StuDudley will chime in with loads of things for you to see and do and eat.
My favorite trip out of SF would have to be Muir Woods (cross the GG bridge). With your very limited time, you will have to stick close to the city. If you had more time, Monterey, Carmel, Yosemite and Napa Valley would be within reach.

I'm not sure Stu would know where a 21-22 year old woman would want to shop. there's excellent boutique shopping in the city in the Marina ( Chestnut St), Cow Hollow (Union St), Hayes Valley ( Hayes St), in the Union Square area itself ( all the designer names), Noe Valley (24th St) and lower Pacific Hts (Fillmore St). Everyone of those areas also has excellent restaurants.

So great! Thank you so much tomfuller and sf!

Congratulations from me also, mschau, on your graduation and obtaining a job. You are off to a good start in life!

I agree with our sf7307's suggestions regarding shopping.

Now about restaurants, and San Francisco has so many wonderful restaurants. What types of food do you and your mother like? And about what will you two want to spend per person less tip and any drinks for your meals?

I just spent two nights in the city near Union Square. If hotel Monaco is near there, and you like to get out and walk you could walk through China town, stop for dimsum, then end up in North Beach with has fun shops and restaurants. If you like shows go to Beach Banket Babylon, it's a great San francisco tradition, variety and comedy. Then you could have dinner at Capps which is right next door.

www.belden-place.com is an alleyway of restaurants in the financial district that is very fun.

I think the traditional street car ride is not to be missed. Catch is at the beginning at Market St and ride down to Fisherman's Wharf.

"Mocca", on Maiden Lane just off Union Square is a great spot for lunch.

Assuming that the "street car" is the "cable car", pick it up on Powell just a few yards north of Market street. Make sure that you get on the Hyde St line and not the Mason/Taylor line. Sit/stand on the east/right side of the car for the best views. Get there early in the morning or later in the evening to avoid huge lines. Perhaps take an evening ride and get off at Green St and have dinner at Frascati www.frascatisf.com - one of our favorites. Browse on Hyde, a few blocks north & south of Frascati and have an ice cream at Swensons for dessert.

Here are my ideas of things to do & see
http://www.fodors.com/community/unit...mendations.cfm

Stu Dudley

Best happy hour deal is at the very upscale Farallon (sp?) restaurant in Union Square. My DD and I spent her birthday shopping in Union Square, and dining at Farallon. Dinners are good, but very pricey.

Their happy hour menu is called something like "Six for Seven", because all appetizers and drinks on the menu are just $7 apiece. You can easily make a meal of two apps apiece. If you get there to snag a window table for two, it is as nice as anywhere to eat. They will bring bread to the table, too. We had dinner reservations there, but I was wishing we were just staying put in the front bar area instead.

It is offered every day of the week. Best deal I have seen in a long time.

Thanks for the correction StuDudley. Yes of course I mean the cable car ride. I didn't know it was not proper to call it a streetcar.

I looked on the Farallon site. It is called "Six Until Seven", meaning $6 each until 7pm everyday. Check out the delicious daily menu.

Suze, the reason it's not "proper" to call it a streetcar is that we have streetcars, too, and they're not the same thing!

You may both enjoy is the Spa at Nordstroms...this is Nordtrom's Flagship store and Customer Service is 5 *****

Union STREET (not Union Square) is a wonderful place of unique shops several blocks long with nice cafes...

For "Foodie" shopping highly rec
http://www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com/
lunch at Slanted Door almost unequaled and don't forget "true to Paris" real macaroons at http://www.miette.com/

One of the best things to do is Theatre: there is a 1/2 off ticket both in Union Square: you really can;t go wrong...

Finally ask the conciege to set up a limo tour at dusk to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge, tour Marin headlands at dark with SF city all lit up and then drop you off at a theatre or restaurant of your choice back in the city.

Wow. Thank you all for the great suggestions!

As for restaurants, we're willing to spend around $20-25 a person, at the most without drinks for a good dinner :)

I'll be looking into all of these!

Suze, I thought you meant the F Line that does have the street cars that are historic street cars. The F Line runs from the Castro district and down Market and turns north in front of the Ferry Building and goes to Fisherman's Wharf.

>>As for restaurants, we're willing to spend around $20-25 a person, at the most without drinks for a good dinner<,

Does that include 25-30% for tip, tax, and "healthy SF" charge????

Stu Dudley

If you want to do Alcatraz buy tix in advance. Take a long stroll up coit tower great view.

Beach Blanket Babylon is a great show to go see!

Our first time we took a tour to do he vineyards - a wine tasting trip to Napa. It was awesome.

Your first trip will not be your last. You will fall in love. So much to see!

:)

If you are interested in Alcatraz, I would suggest buying tickets now. We are doing a night tour and made reservations 10 days in advance and the 6:10 PM tour was already sold out. I think the day time tours are easier to get into though.

I have been to SF twice, and I absolutely love it there. I have three recommendations for places to eat, in order of my preference:
1. Za Pizza - http://www.zapizzasf.com/ - best pizza I have ever had, and it is right on the Hyde Street cable car line.
2. Ike's Place - http://ilikeikesplace.com/ - fantastic sandwiches.
3. Cliff House - http://www.cliffhouse.com/ - more expensive (dinner for two with wine ran us about $100), but you can request a table with an ocean view, and it is remarkably beautiful.

Things to do:
1. Walk the Golden Gate Bridge
2. Rent a bike, ride from Fisherman's Wharf to the GGB and across to Sausalito, take the ferry back to Fisherman's Wharf to drop the bikes off.

Just one more suggestion I would make - the Muni passports are absolutely a good idea. http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mfares/passports.htm. They are $27 per person for a 7 day passport, which gets you unlimited rides on all public transportation in the city, including the cable cars, which are $5 per person per ride one way without it. The cable cars are by far the funnest way to get around, so it easily becomes worth the cost of the passport.

Have fun!

Thank you! StuDudley, without tax and all the extras :)

<<<I think the day time tours are easier to get into though.>>>

Easier, but still not easy. They often sell out.

Oh, if you have good weather when you are here, do take a walk from Fort Mason past the Marina Green and the Yacht Club to the Warming Hut (all of which you can see on googlemaps). it's a beautiful (and sort of San Francisco-iconic) walk -- you will not be alone. You'll be with many, walkers, bikers, dogs, kite-flyers, etc.

>>As for restaurants, we're willing to spend around $20-25 a person, at the most without drinks for a good dinner<

That's going to be tough. Most "mains" at the better restaurants with "good dinners" start around $22-25. If you visit a restaurant and just order a "main", you be in & out of the restaurant in about 45 mins. You could order 2 appetizers each, and stay under $25 per person - try Gitane www.gitanerestaurant.com . An Asian restaurant would work too - but I am less familiar with them.

The best "full dinner", IMO, is the 3 course $24 fixed price menu offered at Butterfly from Tues to Thurs before 7PM.
www.butterflysf.com
We had this menu 2 weeks ago & was very nice.

Stu Dudley

dw...they can save a whole dollar on the passport. They only cost $26 for 7 days until 6/30/11.

Be aware that the California cable car line is totally shut down for awhile. In addition, all cable cars will be out of service from June 1-5. Apparently there may be other sporadic outages before all work is complete on their upgrades.

I agree with Stu finding good restaurants with entrees for less than $20 is pretty difficult in SF, much less a meal for $20-25 per person. That doesn't mean that there are not places to get cheaper eats, but those will tend to be pizza places, neighborhood Italian American, chinese, Mexican, Thai or other ethnic or neighborhood places. It's hard to give recommendations for those as most of us have are own neighborhood choices. As a general rule I find that French bistros in the City tend to be can be more reasonable, places like Le Charm for example has a $32 fixed price 3 course dinner. You might take a look at Chowhound for the City.

Thanks LoveItaly. That IS the route I think is fun for tourists to do, and what I've done several times.

The whichever-car I was on was an historic looking one, lots of wood, vintage signage, open air, with the driver (and the brake!!) right there. Now I have no idea if it WAS a streetcar or a cablecar -lol!

If it ran on fairly flat ground to the Wharf it was a vintage streetcar on the F line (not to be confused with the new streetcars on the J,K,L,M and N lines, which go underground as well as above; if it climbed steep hills it was a cable car. To make things even more confusing we have also have regular buses and trolley buses, which are not to be confused with streetcars!!!

Suze, cable cars are the iconic ones in the Rice-a-Roni commercials. The others to which you refer are great - but much later additions to the Muni Railway inventory.

If you google "cable car" and "f line san francisco", and click on "images", you'll see the difference immediately.

Here you go, suze, this website shows all the historic streetcars.

http://www.streetcar.org/streetcars/

Hello mschau, here is a list of what the SF Chronicle calls their "Bargain Bites" from their website. Not all places are in the SF and not knowing what type of food you two enjoy I have no idea if any of the SF places would appeal to you. It seems from a bit of clicking on some of the names on the list many only have food to go and many are in very small spaces so the wait to get a table can be awhile. Anyway I am posting this in case you want to review the list to see if any place(s) are of interest to you and your mother.

http://www.sfgate.com/food/bargains/

I repeat: Farallon's "Six Untill Seven" menu is an awesome meal Nyday before 7pm. THREE appetizers cost $18 and would be too much food for one person.

Thank you everyone for the suggestions.

Can't wait to try all of your suggestions!

We are leaving on Saturday and my mom and I are torn between a few things. We are taking Mr. Toad's Tour (90 minutes) Saturday afternoon, but were also debating between Muir Woods or a day trip on Mr. Toad's to Monterrey and Carmel.

Any suggestions to clear up our debate?

I don't think a first-timer can do justice to Carmel/Monterey on a "day trip". Most likely, too much time driving & too little time "being there". Save it for your next trip out here when you can spend at least 2-3 nights in the Carmel/Monterey/Pacific Grove/Big Sur/Hwy 1 area - so you can fully appreciate this wonderful section of the USA.

Only 1 "r" in Monterey.

Stu Dudley

We did so many great things in San Francisco with all of your suggestions! Thank you again. We had a great time and really enjoyed ourselves. I don't think we could have crammed anything else into those 4 days if we tried!

Saturday we did a tour with Mr. Toad's which was absolutely fantastic and a great way to see parts of the city that we maybe wouldn't have had time for. Spent majority of the day doing the touristy things. We explored Fisherman's Wharf, Ghiradelli Square, North Beach. We went to dinner at Colibri by our hotel. Shared a few appetizers and it was great!

Sunday morning we went to breakfast at Canteen and it was FABULOUS! If you haven't tried their eggs benedict, you need to! Only 4 booths and a counter. It was exactly the place that we were looking for. We explored more of North Beach, Chinatown- had lunch at Hunan Homes- which was also great. And explored Union Square. We took our time at Gump's and enjoyed that beautiful store.

Monday we took the ferry to Sausalito, but went through the ferry building first. It was one of my favorite parts of the entire trip. I loved the market in the ferry building! We ate at Spinnaker's in Sausalito and walked around a little bit. We probably could have gone without seeing Sausalito but it was worth going once. We also heard about the murals in the Mission. My mom is an art teacher, so she wanted to see them. After Sausalito, we ventured to the Mission and saw the murals. We weren't there long though. We took the bus back to the hotel and ate at the Six until Seven at Farallon! It was fabulous!

Tuesday we had breakfast at Mama's before our flight home. We headed to the Museum of Contemporary Art Museum Store for some last minute art teacher shopping! And before we left, I wanted to see the Full House home, so we took a cab to Alamo Square Park, got out and took pictures in the park, and hopped in the cab! And it was back to Chicago!!

Thank you again! We had a great trip!