Ever wondered how to spend one full day in San Francisco? Do you like national parks, local public transportation, and authentic Chinese food? We packed the first day of our week-long trip to the Bay Area full of cable car adventures and (of course) yummy Chinese food. The primary goal of this trip was to visit the majestic Redwoods National Park, but the trip kicked off in San Francisco and our bellies were ready.

Hong Kong Food Chinatown

You cannot come to San Francisco and not eat Chinese food. Specifically, please visit one (or two or three or four) old-school Hong Kong style cafes! We love exploring grungy but delicious family owned restaurants like these and were so excited to eat as much as we could in our short time in San Francisco.

Cable Car Museum

1201 Mason St, San Francisco, CA 94108

Our first sightseeing destination was the San Francisco Cable Car Museum. This museum was small but charming and well executed. The Cable Car Museum offers free admission and is located right next to the stops for two different prominent cable car lines so you can witness with your own eyes how cable cars actually work and experience it for yourself! The museum displays several actual working cables and explains how they are brought through a series of twists, turns, and figure eights as they travel underground beneath the city streets. The cable cars themselves grasp onto the wires, which never stop moving, and the tightness with which the wires are grasped by the car determines the speed of the cable car. Each cable car can slow down and even stop completely to accommodate passengers without letting go of the moving cable beneath it. Coming from a city with no cable car exposure whatsoever, we were fascinated as we learned about San Francisco’s iconic cable cars.

The bottom floor of the cable car museum displays a few of the giant spoked wheels guiding the cables whirring along beneath the pavement at the intersections right outside the museum.

The cable car museum was very informative and is doable even if you only have 15 minutes to spare. It made our subsequent cable car rides extra enjoyable as we could better appreciate the inner workings more.

Cable Car Ride By Lombard Street

After the Cable Car Museum, we put our new knowledge of cable cars to good use by catching a cable car ride northward to continue exploring San Francisco. We chose the PH (Powell / Hyde) Cable Car. Both the PH line and the PM (Powell / Mason) lines travel north toward the waterfront area, but the PH line is a bit more scenic as it passes by the famous Lombard Street.

The easiest way to purchase cable car tickets is via the MuniMobile app. A single cable car ride costs $8, and a 1-day passport for buses/streetcars/cable cars costs $13. Fair warning: cable cars are both  functional and fun, which means tourists love them. There were often lines of people waiting to board at each stop, and it became very disappointing to hear “sorry, this car is full, wait for the next car” over and over. After waiting for a few rounds, we successfully boarded the PM train and rode it northward to the end of the line.

San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park

499 Jefferson St, San Francisco, CA 94109

We planned to walk over to Fisherman’s Wharf, but ran into a surprise first. We ended up visiting the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, and used our America The Beautiful pass for entry. This park has lots of vessels you can explore, including a houseboat and a couple of large boats we thought looked like pirate ships but ended up being cargo shipping vessels. You can walk on and even inside these vessels.

Musee Mecanique

Pier 45 at the end of Taylor Street, Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco, CA 94133

A quick walk eastward from the SF Maritime National Historic Park takes you to Fisherman’s Wharf. This area is infamous for being painfully touristy, but many say its saving grace is Musee Mecanique at Pier 45. Musee Mecanique, open since 1933, is a huge privately owned collection of coin-operated vintage mechanical arcade games and musical instruments. I had more fun here than I expected, and I was pretty excited to visit in the first place! Musee Mecanique has countless odd little games, played with quarters. Admission to the facility is free, and prices per machine range from 25-50 cents for most games. Coin exchange machines are available inside to make change from dollar bills. My favorite attraction was a shooting game that ejected little pellets toward small metal placard targets moving away from you. A simple shooting game was made so much more enjoyable by the ability to see the mechanical parts whirring about instead of a digital screen! I also enjoyed the simple racing games powered by crank wheels. 

USS Pampanito Museum & Memorial

45 Pier, San Francisco, CA 94133

The USS Pampanito is a submarine that sank six Japanese ships and damaged four others during World War II. It is now a floating museum located right outside Musee Mecanique at Pier 45. The USS Pampanito has actually been restored to nearly operational condition, specifically restored to reflect a specific point in time in the summer of 1945. Access to the USS Pampanito is available through purchased tickets of the America The Beautiful pass.

I had never been in a submarine before, and I really enjoyed this experience. Admission includes a 51 minute audio tour. The self guided tour takes you from one end of the submarine to the other and you literally crawl through tiny doorways connecting areas containing torpedos, sleeping quarters full of stacked bunks, small kitchens, mess hall, officers living quarters, and the command room.

Crab Station At Fisherman’s Wharf

2801 Taylor St, San Francisco, CA 94133

The entrance to Fisherman’s Wharf is lined with a handful of shellfish restaurants. We chose one at random (Crab Station) and ordered a crab sandwich, remembering from our Maine trip how much we loved our crab roll and preferred it over the lobster variety. The crab sandwich at Crab Station was delicious, made into a crab salad atop a perfectly soft yet crusty roll. At $14 for a huge serving of crab, I would definitely do this again.

Pier 39

After eating our crab sandwich, we made our way a bit further east to Pier 39. Pier 39 is another painfully touristy spot, and it honestly reminded me of Universal Studio Orlando’s City Walk (Bubba Gump and all). We ate a crab chowder in a sourdough bread bowl at Boudins. Next time, I want to try the clam chowder!

The last stop at the end of Pier 39 was my favorite. The K Docks are the spot to go to to see sea lions at Pier 39. You can hear the sea lions barking from a distance away, and follow your ears to find where they’re hanging out. The sea lion colony reportedly increases in number at these docks in mid-August.

Buena Vista Irish Coffee

2765 Hyde St, San Francisco, CA 94109

Heading back west from Pier 39, a quick ride on Bus F took us to Buena Vista restaurant, reportedly the (American) birthplace of the Irish coffee cocktail. Most visitors come here specifically for this cocktail, and the bar lines up 20+ glasses waiting to be filled with the concoction. We watched our bartender adeptly fill the glass with sugar cubes, then fresh hot coffee, then whisky, then whipped heavy cream. I was pleasantly surprised by the flavor of this Irish coffee. It was very coffee forward without being bitter, balanced by the warmth of the liquor with delicate sweetness.

The story of the Irish coffee cocktail at Buena Vista involves Jack Koeppler who owned the restaurant in 1952. He strove to recreate the Irish coffee served in Ireland, and over time he and travel writer Stanton Delaplane created a recipe that used cream aged for 48 hours and frothed to float properly on top of the cocktail.

Lombard Street

While Buena vista Cafe is right across the street from the start/end point of the cable car line, the line for the cable cars was exorbitantly long. The line was long enough to convince us to walk up a huge hill instead of taking the cable car on our way up to Lombard Street.

Lombard Street is the famed curvy, windy, super steep, “screechy wheels” street in the Russian Hill neighborhood. It winds up/down a steep hill with sharp switchbacks past expensive Victorian mansions.

Lombard St actually doesn’t hold the title of the steepest street in San Francisco. That title belongs to Vermont Street between 20th and 22nd Streets in the Portrero Hill neighborhood. While Lombard is not quite as steep as Vermont Street, Lombard is more attractive due to its carefully manicured landscape. The best place to take a picture of the famous curvy Lombard Street is at the bottom of the hill, looking up.

Cable Car Turnaround

Don’t miss a visit to the intersection of Powell and Mason to witness the cable car turnaround used to “U turn” the cable cars at the end of the line. This was super interesting!

Individual cable cars are driven onto a rotatable round wooden platform. Yes, wooden! The cable is released from the cars grip, and the wooden platform is rotated manually by hand. Two workers shoved with the weight of their entire bodies to slowly rotate the platform and cable car 180 degrees to prepare it to take off again in the opposite direction. If you haven’t ridden a cable car after dark, with the cool nighttime breeze rushing through your hair as you pass between dark alleys and glowing shop windows, you need to go back and do it! I always like to experience the “local transportation” in cities we visit, and touristy as this one may be, this has been the most entertaining so far.