June 18, 2009

If you are going to San Francisco, forget about the flowers in your hair as the sixties song advised.  You probably won’t have time to get over to Height Ashbury anyway – especially if you have to tangle with the traffic.  So, my advice is, If you are going to San Francisco, be sure and leave you car at home – you can’t park it anywhere.  Per day parking is expensive and often charged at hotels too.  If you are fortunate enough to find a parking spot, it will probably be on a hill and you will worry all day about a run away car.  Ditch the car and take some other mode of transportation:  ferry, bus, train.  Then use your legs to walk from attraction to attraction or catch one of the more quaint modes of getting there: cable car, streetcar, sight-seeing bus, city bus.  Arriving in San Francisco sans auto will lead to a lot of delicious peace and a lack of anxious excitement.

One other thing, if you go alone: DO get a room as close as possible to the thing you most want to see.  It may be 20 dollars more per night, but it will save the consternation of walking through the none too nice areas in the not so safe feeling times of day.