We (two senior Aussies) are staying in a South San Fran hotel for a couple of days before picking up a hire car for a Californian road trip. I know we can get a bus into the city (KX or MX?) and back, but is there a daily pass we could buy to enable us to get around downtown San Francisco, once we get into town? A combined pass would be great, but am not sure it exists. Have tried the transit website, but find it confusing. Thanks.

Yes. There is a tourism center opposite the Market St BART station which sells transportation passes of all sorts. There may be others, but this is the one I have used. It is below ground level near the cable car boarding point.

It's called a Muni Pass. You can find out more at sfmta.com

Carrabella...

I used the 3 day Muni pass in July this year and got alot of use out of it and highly recommend it. I was able to use it for unlimited rides on buses, street cars and cable cars within the city. I felt it was money well spent. I also bought the $3USD MUNI system map and it was the best 3 dollars on a map I ever spent...very helpful.

There is no combined pass Samtrans - MUNI for less then a month. There are daily passes for MUNI, somebody (was it YK?) posted a report recently, they got their passes at the SFO airport.

For other places selling 1-day or longer passes, scroll down here:

http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mfares/passvend.htm#passvend

You said, the information is confusing... here is a map of Samtrans buses serving SSF area - make sure they will take you to San Francisco, or you will need to take BART to the city.

http://www.samtrans.com/system_map.html

Sorry for asking, but is there a reason for you to be in SSF? It's not a part of San Francisco, and public transit is a pain.

I was thinking the same thing, Faina. Is there a particular reason to be staying in SSF?

Thank you all for your helpful information. The reason we picked the hotel near the airport, is economic. (It's our second trip to the USA this year, we are taking advantage of the really good fares at the moment, instead of staying home and saving up, as we should do!) We have stayed in town several times before - this couple of days is mainly to recover a bit from our long flight before our main road trip. We will also have two more days with a car at the end, before flying to Washington DC. We have to pick up the hire car from the airport too, and there is a free shuttle from the hotel to there.

Cheers from Down Under!

Carabella, it seems to be a false economy to me, as you may spend as much traveling into/from SF as you would if you pay a little more stay in a hotel there. Have ever used Priceline (the name your own price option)? If not, check out biddingfortravel.com and study the bidding process. We go to SF several weekends a year and usually find a hotel for about $80/night by bidding for a 4* in the Embarcadero area.

Carrabella: Which hotel? Are you actually staying in "South San Francisco", or just south of San Francisco and near the airport.

South San Francisco is a specific town and doesn't have very good connections into SF. But south of SF near the airport could be other towns and could possibly have better connections.

So tell us exactly where you are staying. Also - how much are you paying? If you really want to stay near the airport, you can get really good rates at SFO area hotels (which are not in South San Francisco) using Priceline. I normally get one of the 3 or 4 star places for around $50-$55-ish and once got the Doubletree for $37.

And for around $80-$110 you can get a really nice hotel in central San Francisco. Just something to consider.

I don't know what you're paying for the SSF hotel, nor how much it would cost on Priceline, nor where your hotel is in relation to BART or the bus, but I don't think it's such a big deal. SSF to downtown is 20 minutes on BART (in fact, if your hotel has a shuttle to the BART station, I'd take BART rather than the bus). It's not the BEST choice of a place to stay, but I don't think it's such a bad idea either.

My main point was - is the hotel actually IN South San Francisco?

I've had friends staying at the El Rancho who thought it was 'South San Francisco' . . . .

Funny thing is, El Rancho would actually be the most convenient to BART!

Yeah - I know (just trying to confirm the OP is actually staying in the city of South San Francisco)

But I guess they know where they are staying . . . . .

Thank you all! Yes , it IS South SF. The hotel is opposite the Convention Center - used to be the Goodnite Inn, now Citigarden, and we did choose it for economic reasons, with breakfast included, and airport shuttle available. Betsy, we do use Priceline for lots of our bookings in America, but DH was unable to get anything in our pricerange downtown. We have only just come back from a month in Utah and Brazil, and we don't usually have two overseas holidays in six months, but because of the fantastic prices available from Australia on United, less than $900A to Washington and return, we decided to make the most of it!.
We decided to have a couple of days without the car in SF, and find bus travel lets you see a bit on the way, as well as meet some locals. It sure was lots of fun in Rio!

We are driving from SF to Reno, Lassen Volcanic NP, Sacramento, Yosemite, Morro Bay, Monterey and back to SF for a couple more nights, then flying to Washington, (had only a one night stopover on the way back from Brazil and it wasn't nearly enough) , then Gettysburg, New York, & Annapolis. We leave on Sunday - really looking forward to it. Thank you all again for your interest.

Carrabella.
We have just returned from a trip which concluded with five and a half days in San Francisco. We bought a seven day MUNI pass. It was an excellent investment along with the $3 MUNI map.
Rob.

Slightly off topic, but the thing we enjoyed most in San Francisco was the Segway tour which covers much of the Embarcadaro area and begins near the trolley turn around.