As a child of the 90’s who grew up watching the Tanner family cruise around San Francisco during the opening theme of Full House, I’ve always had a desire to visit the city and wander its hilly neighborhoods full of Painted Lady Victorian houses. In January 2025, my work travels took me to San Fran for a conference that started on January 2nd, and since I already had time off for the holiday, I decided to fly in early to be able to ring in the New Year there and do some exploring before getting down to business.
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Stay
I booked a separate hotel for the personal part of my stay. Around the holidays, there’s nothing like staying in a cozy Victorian bed and breakfast, so I decided to treat myself to a stay at the quaint Queen Anne Hotel in Pacific Heights. The hotel occupies an 1890 Victorian mansion that was once a finishing school for girls, and is rumored to be haunted. The rooms are tastefully furnished with period furniture and modern amenities. A continental breakfast is served each morning in the hotel’s salon, along with afternoon tea and sherry. I absolutely adored my stay at the Queen Anne, and loved wandering the neighborhoods around it.
For the business part of my trip, I moved on over to the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, where my conference was being hosted. I had a lovely stay there as well, with a room on a high floor facing westward that gifted me the most beautiful sunsets out over the city. The streets around the hotel were slightly less comfortable for a woman walking around solo in the evenings and early mornings, but there were plenty of nearby public transit options to head into some other neighborhoods for dinner.
See and Do
The first thing I did when I checked into my hotel on the first day and hit the ground running (after grabbing a delicious lunch – more on San Fran food coming in a separate blog post!) was head to Alamo Square to see the famed row of Painted Ladies. These picture-perfect pastel Victorian houses line the eastern side of Alamo Square, a park atop a hill that offers breathtaking views of the San Francisco skyline beyond the Victorian beauties. If you’ve watched Full House, you’ll recognize it in a heartbeat. And speaking of Full House, the fictional Tanner family home is not a far walk from the square at 1709 Broderick Street. It’s a privately-owned home, so please be respectful when visiting!
From there, I continued on wandering the ritzy Pacific Heights neighborhood en route to the waterfront where I planned to grab dinner and beers at San Francisco Brewing. It did not take long in my exploration for me to learn about San Francisco hills. If you’ve never been to San Francisco, you probably at least know that it’s a hilly city from images of Victorian houses on sloped streets like the Painted Ladies row. But nothing prepared me for what it was actually like walking some of these hills. I had held off buying a transit pass, but when my legs literally almost gave out on me, I caved and bought a 7-day pass to use for the whole trip and hopped on a bus! One scenic hilly street that you absolutely have to see is Lombard Street, known as “the Crookedest Street in the World” with eight sharp curves.
When I finally made my way down to the bay, I had my dinner and beers and wandered Ghirardelli Square, the original Ghirardelli chocolate factory which has since been repurposed into a retail and dining destination. Too full of beer on that first night, I returned to Ghirardelli Square later in the week to enjoy a sundae and shop the chocolates at the Ghirardelli Experience.
I started the next day with a trip out to Alcatraz Island to tour the infamous penitentiary that housed the likes of Al Capone. A ticket to visit Alcatraz includes round-trip ferry transportation and the self-guided audio tour through the cellhouse. There is a gift shop on the island, but nowhere to dine, so plan accordingly! I was on an early morning ferry out and after a few hours exploring, was back on the mainland in time for lunch.
Upon getting back from Alcatraz, I made a quick stop over to Pier 39 in Fisherman’s Wharf. There are plenty of dining and entertainment options on the pier, but my main objective was to see the colony of noisy California sea lions basking in the sun along the pier! I continued on along the Embarcadero and grabbed lunch in the Ferry Building, which has plenty of dining options as well.
A few blocks away from the Ferry Building, I caught a Route 38 bus across town to visit the Sutro Baths and Lands End National Recreation Area. This park offers walking trails with incredible views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the area where the San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific Ocean. Nestled below the cliffs are the Sutro Baths, the ruins of a once-grand Victorian era bathhouse.
My exploration the next day took me on a half-day excursion to Muir Woods National Monument. I booked with Dylan’s Tours, and my ticket included guided round-trip transportation to Muir Woods with a driving tour of key San Francisco sites and a stop on the way back for lunch in the town of Sausalito across the bay. We made a quick stop on our way out of town at Fort Point for a rest stop and some scenic photos up close of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Our tour guide Patrick was phenomenal and full of information on the city, making the 30-40 minute drive out to the woods entertaining by playing music trivia featuring artists who were from or recorded in the bay area and rewarding us with Ghirardelli chocolates when we guessed right. Muir Woods was absolutely gorgeous. We were given an hour and a half to wander, which was more than enough time for me to complete the main loop through the idyllic redwood trees along a babbling creek. Hardly any sunlight makes it past the canopy of treetops, making it densely humid and chilly in the woods – layers are a must!
On our stop in Sausalito on the way back to San Fran, Patrick drove us past the old Sausalito location of the Record Plant, a recording studio utilized by artists such as The Grateful Dead and Fleetwood Mac, before cutting us loose for lunch on our own along Sausalito’s main street. I enjoyed tacos and a margarita at a restaurant called Copita then took a stroll along the waterfront.
The Muir Woods excursion both departed from and returned us to San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, which offers great views of the bay and also serves as a terminal for the Powell & Hyde Cable Car line. It’s cool to see the workers rotating the cable cars on a turntable. Riding a cable car in San Francisco is a quintessential experience, so I decided to hop on at this stop for the experience, although I did go on to ride the cable cars a few more times during my stay as it is a great way to get around. The Powell-Hyde line is arguably the most popular, and the line can get long to get on at the Maritime Park depending on time of day.
That evening was New Year’s Eve. I had grander plans for finding a good dive bar to hang out in until it was time for the fireworks show, but a sinus infection derailed my plans and I opted for a takeout meal and some time in my hotel room after being on the go all day. I did make it out to see the fireworks along the Embarcadero, and was glad I did. It was a pretty good fireworks show!
The next day I made the transfer over to my Union Square hotel for the business part of the trip. For New Year’s Day, I took it easy and wandered around the Union Square area a bit, checking out the holiday decorations on Union Square and the shopping in the area.
I then headed into Chinatown and made a stop at Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory. Despite fortune cookies being widely available in Chinese American restaurants, it’s actually believed that they originated in San Francisco with a Japanese immigrant. At Golden Gate Fortune Cookie, you can see the fortune cookies being made right in front of you, and can have one created with your own custom fortune. This seemed like the perfect way to kick off the new year, so I had one made with a little self-written fortune to myself.
San Francisco is an incredible city and I fell in love with all of the Victorian architecture, the true melting pot of cultures, and the vast food scene – more on the food coming soon!
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