Things to Do

The Mission is a great area and worth exploring all over, but Valencia is a good place to start. If you take the BART to 16th and Mission, Valencia is one block up the hill. There are tons of restaurants there (highly recommended are Sunflower Vietnamese Restaurant at 506 (get the lemongrass chicken!) and Mission Cheese at 736), bars and some great thrift stores.  You might also want to check out 826 Valencia, the flagship location for Dave Eggers 'creative writing scheme for kids which is now nationwide. The front is a pirate store and lots of fun to wander around.

If you want a great alternative place to have fun in San Francisco, try Urban Putt.   This is the city's first and only indoor miniature putt-putt course.   They have beer, snacks and miniature golf that would make Rube Goldberg proud.

Strategically located at the northern tip of San Francisco, California, the Presidio has played an important role in American History, taking in refuge way back from the Spanish Era, the Mexican-American War, and from World War II to the Civil War.

As different advanced digital SLRs are widely used today, why not look back how the very first camera works, way back since the time of Aristotle, which is known as camera obscura. A device which project an image of the surroundings onto a surface using only existing light sources from outside like sunlight. A large-scale of camera obscura, inside where people can enjoy the view of the Pacific coast in a large parabolic disc, is located in San Francisco, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001, and the last remaining structure of the world famous Playland.

Well it was time to do it, even though I felt a little nervous. Really- I mean I am not getting any younger and that bridge has been there for a long time. I mean, people really admire it and think it is something pretty special so I decided to take a look up close and walk across. Hooray for me because it was really fun.

My Golden Gate Bridge Certificate

This is what needs to done before a GG bridge walk:

SUNSCREEN- you think it is foggy and you won’t get a sunburn- WRONG- wear the sunscreen- I promise you will thank me later.

Amidst the busy street and active life in San Francisco, nature tripper can actually enjoy here communing with wildlife. Just 12 miles north, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area is a National Park Service called Muir Woods National Monument. It was named after naturalist John Muir by William Kent who bought this land together with his wife Elizabeth Thacher Kent and later donated to the federal government.

If you feel like knockin' your boots to a loud country music out of town on a Wednesday night, visit Twang