Four Days In San Francisco With Teenagers – Trip Report

In September 2019 we travelled from Australia to the US for a four week holiday with our two teenage boys (aged 18 and 15). We flew from Qantas Australia to San Francisco on a Thursday and arrived in San Francisco on the Thursday around the same time we left (gotta love the time zone differences).

Here’s a summary of what we did together. Hope you find it useful if you’re planning a vacation of your own to San Francisco with teens.

Day 1 – Thursday – We Arrive

We arrived at San Francisco airport around 2 pm on Thursday and although it took a while to get through customs and immigration, it wasn’t too bad.

We were staying with a friend who had also just flown back into San Francisco from a work trip, so he met us at the airport and drove us back to his place.

Our apartment was in the Inner Sunset area, just south of Golden Gate Park, and was close to the train on Judah Street and the bus on 19th Avenue.

Once we unpacked, we went out for a walk. I’m a big believer in getting your body clock adjusted as quickly as possible to your new time-zone, so getting out for an afternoon walk was the best thing we could do.

Our stomachs were still figuring out what time of day it was, so we soon found ourselves looking for somewhere to eat. We ended up at Pasquale’s Pizzeria on Irving St and ordered some pizza and pasta. It was just what we needed and gave us all an energy boost.

Our next stop was to the T-Mobile store to grab sim cards for the four of us. We’ve learnt from previous experience that making sure each of us has a phone that has data and calls is the best safety net in case we get separated or decide to split up for a while to do our own thing.

Finally, we dropped into Andronico’s which was a fantastic local supermarket. Our boys got excited looking at some of the food which we didn’t have in Australia and we bought some food for the next few days. I was particularly excited to get some American bagels after being pretty unimpressed with the ones I’ve eaten in Australia.

When we travel we look for self-contained accommodation that has a kitchen so we’re not spending money on expensive breakfasts and can eat in if we want to.

By the time we returned to our accommodation, it was around 5 pm and we were all feeling tired. I had nothing planned for that evening so we had a lazy evening. I went out to grab some food a little later, and I may have bought some ice cream as well!

Then we all had an early night to bed to get ready for our first full day in San Francisco.

Day 2 – Friday – Walking Tour and Alcatraz

One of the things we try and do on holidays is to take a walking tour of the cities we are visiting. It helps us learn a bit more about the history of the city and sometimes the tour will cover places that we were going to visit anyway, so we don’t need to see them again.

When we have it on the first morning, it provides an extra incentive to get out of bed on time and get out of the apartment.

So we found ourselves on Judah St at 9 am with the Muni App installed on our phones and a day pass purchased for each of us. We successfully caught the train down to Union Square, although it took a little longer than expected and we missed the start of the tour. We caught up with it at the next stop and our San Francisco education began.

Our tour was the free walking tour with Wild San Francisco Tours. Whilst this was a free tour, you’re encouraged to provide a tip to the tour guide at the conclusion of the tour. There were probably around 20 people on the tour and our guide had an exceptional knowledge of the history of San Francisco. We learnt so much on this tour, which started at Union Square, went through Chinatown and ended at the base of the Transamerica building.

It was time for lunch and our guide gave us a few food options.

We walked up Columbus Avenue to Molinari Delicatessen and bought some sandwiches for lunch (once we worked out how the ordering system works). I thought it’d be nice to walk up to Washington Square to eat but unfortunately, it was closed for renovations, so we sat in a small park next door to eat.

It was getting pretty hot at this stage and we decided to head back to the apartment to take a break before our Alcatraz Tour in the evening.

Thanks to Google Maps I figured out which bus to catch and we started to head back. The bus actually went past the Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Center so we got off there and took some photos. From there we hopped back on the bus and learnt a lesson to always check the destination as well as the route number because we found ourselves heading back the way we’d come.

Once we realised the error of our ways we changed buses and caught the right one in the right direction. We eventually ended up back at our home, but it took a bit longer than expected.

That evening we headed down to Pier 33 for the Alcatraz Night Tour. We’d actually planned to do this on Saturday night but it was booked out so we booked it for the Friday instead. I had wanted to keep the Friday night free in case of jet lag, but we had limited time in San Francisco so jet lag had to wait.

Note – the night tour is very popular and you need to book in advance. We booked a couple of months ahead and even at that stage, the Saturday night tour was fully booked.

The tour was awesome and well worth it. We learnt a lot about the island’s history and use as a prison. It’s a bit sobering seeing the cells up close and realising how basic the conditions were.

The trip over and back featured some great views of the harbour.

We had some time before the last boat left the island so my son and I took some photos of San Francisco and the lighthouse on Alcatraz. This is an added advantage of coming at night – the views are awesome!

We caught the last boat back to Pier 33 and headed home.

Day 3 – Saturday – The Majestic Electric E-Bike Tour

Continuing with the theme of having a reason to get out of bed, today we went on an e-bike tour.

My wife enjoys bike riding and I wanted to incorporate this into our holiday in some way. San Francisco is so hilly so there are parts of it that are not so bike-friendly. An e-bike solves this problem and makes it so much easier to get around.

I’d done a lot of research on e-bike tours and a problem I’d kept coming up against is that most of them had a minimum age of 16. Our youngest was a month off turning 16, so a lot of these tours weren’t an option.

Luckily, I found the Streets of San Francisco Bike Tours website and found that their Majestic Electric bike tour allowed 15-year-olds to ride the e-bikes. They were fantastic to deal with and provided clear instructions on how to meet up. We’d booked this a few months in advance as it was one of our must-do things in San Francisco.

So after a short train ride, we met up at the CityRide Bike Rentals shop. This was in the Hayes Valley area and was the classic San Francisco hipster area that I was expecting to see.

As luck would have it, we were the only four people booked for the tour so we felt a bit special. Our tour guide helped us learn how to use the e-bikes and we were on our way.

Our first stop was Alamo Square and the Painted Ladies. Then we went on to the Presidio and made a short detour to the normal tour so I could take a look at the Lucasfilms building in the Presidio and take a photo of the Yoda Fountain (yes, there is such a thing as a Yoda Fountain).

Then we stopped near the Golden Gate Bridge to take in the views and then rode around to Ocean Beach where we stopped for lunch.

From there we rode through Golden Gate Park, Haight-Ashbury and The Castro before heading through the Mission district and back to Hayes Valley. It was a fantastic day, starting at 10 am and finishing around 3 pm.

It was another warm day so we were pretty tired by the end of it. While the e-bikes made it easier, there is still a fair bit of exertion when you ride around 37 km.

We headed back to the apartment and had some meals we’d bought from the supermarket.

Another great day in San Francisco and some awesome memories were made.

Day 4 – Sunday – Fisherman’s Wharf, the Coit Tower, Shopping and Pier 14

Our last full day in San Francisco and we had a lazy start on this day. We’ve learnt that you need to have some downtime or else you get too tired and can’t enjoy the trip.

Once we were ready we headed to Fisherman’s Wharf to check out all the tourists. We stopped to watch some dancers busking and I somehow ended up as part of their show.

After a quick lunch, we caught a bus to Coit Tower for some great views of San Francisco. This was the first place we had to queue – it took around 30 minutes to get up to the top but the views were worth it.

From there we walked towards Union Square. My boys needed a shopping fix and, considering we were going to spend the next few days in Yosemite, we agreed to head to the shops.

I ended up going to the Salesforce Center to see Salesforce Park while they went to the Westfield on Market St.

Salesforce Park was great (and very quiet) and from there I headed back to the shops to meet up with the family.

Our eldest son picked our dinner spot and we ended up at Super Duper Burgers on Market St.

From there we went down Market St to Pier 14. This is a fantastic place to take photos of downtown San Francisco and (in the other direction), the Oakland Bay Bridge.

After getting our photo fixes, we caught a Lyft to Lombard St for more photography. I’d seen so many long exposure shots from the top of the street showing cars descending. It must have been a quiet night when we went there because there weren’t too many cars to go down. We took our photos and caught a Lyft back to the apartment. Our time in San Francisco was almost at an end.

Day 5 – Monday (bonus day) – Thanks Karl For Showing Up

Before we left for Yosemite, we had one more thing to do – sunrise photos of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This was something I had planned to do on one of the days in San Francisco – it was a matter of working out how jet-lagged we were going to be.

We hadn’t got to it on the other days, so this was the day.

We were up early and took a Lyft across the bridge to drop us off near Battery Spencer. As luck would have it our driver was a photographer who gave us a few tips on where to photograph.

That was the luckiest we got that morning.

When I was planning this trip, I read a lot about Karl, the famous San Francisco fog. We hadn’t seen much of Karl during our stay, but he decided to visit on Monday morning.

We could see about 20 metres in front of us as we walked towards Battery Spencer. There were some other photographers there as well, so we took comfort in the fact we weren’t the only idiots out at that time of the day.

We waited for the fog to lift. And kept waiting.

The sun appeared to rise, but it was a bit hard to tell what was going on because we could hardly see anything.

So we turned back and ordered another Lyft. This one took a while because there aren’t too many drivers who are either in that area to begin with, or who are keen to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to pick us up and then bring us back.

But eventually one arrived, and we headed back to our apartment.

We grabbed our bags, did our final pack and headed off to the airport in another Lyft to pick up our hire car for the next leg of our trip.

Our San Francisco Travel Tips

We loved San Francisco. It was so relaxed and the people were so nice and friendly that it was a great place to start our holiday.

There were things we didn’t get to do – the cable cars weren’t running that week due to maintenance, I would have loved to spend more time around the Haight and Castro areas, there were a bunch of photography locations we didn’t get a chance to visit and I still need to get that shot of the Golden Gate Bridge (thanks Karl!!). There’s always next time.

We packed a lot into the time we were there. If you’re planning on going, here are my San Francisco travel tips:

• Always research your accommodation and use Google Maps to figure out where you’re staying in relation to the places you want to visit, and what public transport options are nearby.
• Research public transport and understand what passes are available. These are almost always better value than buying individual tickets for each journey.
• Walking tours are a great way to learn more about the city you’re in. I used to hate the thought of them, now I love them. And don’t be a stingy tipper.
• The E-Bike tour was fantastic and a great way to see so much of the city in one day. We all loved it.
• Book early for popular attractions like Alcatraz. Early as in months ahead.
• Buying food from supermarkets was a great way to save money on holiday.
• Ideally, we wouldn’t have left the Battery Spencer photo of the Golden Gate Bridge until the last day, as this meant we had no other chance to try again. If there are certain things you must do on your holiday, schedule them earlier so you have some buffer time if you need to reschedule.
• The views from Pier 14 at night are awesome.

If you’re planning a vacation to San Francisco, I hope this article gives you some good tips to use in planning your holiday.

Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think.