“The San Francisco everyone photographs is real. But it’s a postcard of a city that has about nine other cities folded inside it, and almost nobody unfolds all of them.”
— Elliot Kallen
Hey, it’s Elliot. Tammy and I have gone back to San Francisco more times than either of us can count over the years, and somewhere along the way we stopped following the guidebook and started following whatever actually held our attention. A hill nobody mentioned. A street we wandered down by accident and didn’t want to leave. A bar with no sign out front. This guide is that version of the city, laid out the way we’d actually walk it.
It’s built as a real, three-day plan, because a list of forty scattered ideas is hard to use and even harder to picture. Three days, roughly hour by hour, in the order we’d do them if you handed us your itinerary and asked us to fill it in. Every quote you’ll come across along the way is from a real San Franciscan or a real traveler who’d already been where we’re sending you. We went looking for their words on purpose, because we didn’t want this to just be our opinion.
This doesn’t replace the icons, either. Go see the bridge. It’s worth it. This is what fills in around that, so you leave having seen the San Francisco locals actually live in, not just the one on the postcard rack.
QUICK ANSWER
This is a three-day San Francisco itinerary built around hidden gems and non-touristy spots. Day One covers hills and neighborhoods worth the detour — Bernal Heights, Valencia Street, a hidden speakeasy. Day Two covers the city’s secret center — Clement Street, the Ferry Building instead of the Wharf, a rooftop park on top of a bus station, a free concrete slide. Day Three leaves the city for the bay itself — the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito, Angel Island, and dinner at a local institution. Most of it needs nothing booked in advance and is fully walkable, ferry-able, or a short ride apart.
DAY ONE
Hidden Gems and Non-Touristy Neighbourhoods
We start away from the water, on purpose. The best version of this city’s first morning is a hill nobody puts on a postcard.
9:00 AM Bernal Heights Hill
Start at 16th Street and walk south down Valencia, then east on 24th, and watch the neighborhood shift block by block from taquerias to quiet residential streets. The hill appears on your right, and you climb it. It’s steep enough that you’ll feel it in your legs, and it’s worth every step — at the top, the whole city opens up in a 360-degree view that most first-time visitors never see, simply because nobody put it on their list.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“Getting off at 16th St BART and walking down Valencia, turning east down 24th street, and then going on a hike up to Bernal Hill is a really nice day or half day. Really nice 360 views at the top, plus some window shopping, and a huge selection of food and coffee and ice cream.”
We almost skipped this climb the first time, because everyone had told us Twin Peaks was the view. Glad we didn’t. There’s a swing at the top if you catch it free, and if you sit there for ten minutes with a coffee, you’ll understand why locals treat this hill like a backyard instead of a tourist stop.
11:00 AM Valencia Street, the Mission
Walk back down and let Valencia Street pull you along for a couple of hours. This is the street we point people to first when they ask where locals actually go — bookstores, vintage shops, murals down the side alleys, food at every price point. Don’t rush it. It’s a browsing street, not a checklist street.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“Take a walk along Haight Street, or Valencia. Both have many, many shops that you can thrift at. And for cocktails after, go to Horsefeather if you stay in the Haight area.”
Get lunch on Valencia wherever the local line is longer than the tourist line — you’ll know it when you see it, it’s the one where people are ordering in Spanish and nobody’s photographing their burrito before they eat it.
7:30 PM The Hideout at Dalva
Walk into Dalva, an ordinary-looking Mission bar, and keep going toward the back. There’s a door there. Behind it is the Hideout, a tiny speakeasy most people on the sidewalk have no idea exists.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“Checkout The Hideout at Dalva. It’s a speakeasy tucked into the back of another bar in the Mission. This place is very fun to sit at the bar and chill. They will be chiseling your ice blocks with an ice pick and have a creative menu.”
Order whatever the bartender’s most excited about that night, and watch them chip a single block of ice down to size for your glass. This is the kind of hour that ends up being the one you tell people about when you get home, more than the bridge photo does.
DAY TWO
Fun, Secret Things to Do in San Francisco
Today we trade the tourist center of gravity — Fisherman’s Wharf — for the real one, and you won’t miss it.
9:00 AM Clement Street, the Richmond
This is, hand to heart, the most underrated street in San Francisco. It’s a real neighborhood main street, dense with dim sum counters and bakeries, and most first-time visitors never make it out here because it isn’t next to anything else on the standard list. That’s exactly why we love it.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“Non-touristy would be exploring neighborhoods that are more local. That would be Cole Valley, Noe Valley, Inner Sunset, Inner Richmond, and Valencia Street in the Mission.”
Walk the length of it slowly. If it’s a Sunday, the farmers market will be out, and that’s the best possible version of this morning. Grab breakfast from whichever bakery has a line of people who look like they live four blocks away.
11:30 AM Musée Mécanique (20 Minutes, Not All Day)
Now we do head toward the water, but with a plan. Musée Mécanique, a warehouse of antique mechanical arcade games near the Wharf, is a genuine hidden gem even though it sits right next to the most touristy square mile in the city. Go on a weekday if you can, to feel it the way it’s meant to be felt.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“Musée Mécanique is my top place to take visitors, it’s a true hidden gem that feels pulled out of the past. Go on a weekday when few are there to get the vibe.”
Here’s the honest advice we give every friend who visits: see the sea lions, give the Wharf itself a firm twenty minutes, then walk away. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that it isn’t the real neighborhood, and your afternoon is better spent somewhere that is.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“If you end up at Fisherman’s Wharf, set a time limit, it doesn’t represent the real neighborhoods of the city. I recommend the Ferry Building Marketplace for a foodie experience, especially on a Saturday for pop-up restaurants during the weekly farmers market.”
— a San Francisco destination expert, on trading the Wharf for the Ferry Building
1:00 PM Ferry Building Marketplace
This is lunch, and it might be the best single hour of eating in the whole trip. On a Saturday, the farmers market spills out along the water and pop-up food stalls line up next to the regular vendors inside. Get something you’ve never heard of. That’s the whole point of this stop.
3:30 PM Salesforce Rooftop Park
This is the part that genuinely surprises people. There’s a full 5.4-acre park on top of the Salesforce Transit Center downtown, with a free gondola ride up to reach it. We’ve brought people up here who’ve visited San Francisco a dozen times and had no idea it existed.
5:30 PM Seward Street Slides
Yes, we’re ending the afternoon on a playground, and no, we’re not sorry. The Seward Street Slides are two steep concrete slides built right into a hillside in Noe Valley, free to use, and beloved enough that locals have a whole system for riding them properly.
Bring a flattened cardboard box if you have one, or borrow the local trick and use what’s lying around. Five minutes here does more for the feel of a trip than most planned attractions manage in an hour.
DAY THREE
Unique Places to Visit in the Bay Area
Today we get on the water. This is the day we look forward to most whenever we’re back.
9:00 AM Bike or Walk the Golden Gate Bridge
Rent a bike, or take your time and walk, and cross the bridge toward Sausalito. It’s touristy in the sense that plenty of people do it. It doesn’t feel touristy while you’re doing it, and that’s the whole difference.
11:00 AM Sausalito and the Ferry Back
Sausalito is small enough to wander for an hour or two and still catch an early-afternoon ferry back into the city. Before the dock, look for the Presidio Yacht Club bar near Cavallo Point, if you have time. It might be the single best view in the entire Bay Area.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“You could also rent a bike in the city and bike over the bridge and take the ferry back from Sausalito. My favorite view in all of the Bay Area is from the Presidio Yacht Club bar near Cavallo Point in Sausalito. Best dive bar ever, with this incredible view of the Golden Gate Bridge.”
— a local, on the Sausalito ferry loop and its best-kept bar
2:00 PM Angel Island (If You Have the Time)
If your schedule allows a full afternoon, swap Sausalito for Angel Island instead, or save it for a future trip. It gets a fraction of the visitors Alcatraz does, and the views back at the bay are, in our opinion, better.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“Angel Island likely has the best views of the Bay, and the immigration station there is Ellis Island’s dark twin, because of the history with the Chinese Exclusion Act and its role in the wartime detention of ethnically Japanese citizens. It will take you a day, but it’s worth it.”
— a local, on the island most visitors skip in favor of Alcatraz
7:00 PM Swan Oyster Depot
Back in the city, dinner is non-negotiable: Swan Oyster Depot. Cash-only, counter-only, always a line. It’s the best place in San Francisco for crab and oysters by wide local consensus, and worth the wait every single time.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“Swan Oyster Depot: cash-only seafood bar that’s the best place for crab and oysters in the city. Get there early; the queues can be bad.”
9:00 PM A Nightcap at Vesuvio Cafe
Close the trip the way North Beach has closed a thousand nights before yours: at Vesuvio, the historic Beat-era bar right next to City Lights Books. It’s the kind of place where you can sit alone at the bar and still feel like you’re part of something.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“We found a cute little dive bar called Vesuvio Cafe, totally recommend it if you’re by yourself. Vesuvio is pretty famous, glad you stumbled upon it. Most of us have stumbled out of it at some point.”
Raise a glass here for us. Every time we close a trip at Vesuvio, it feels less like the end of a vacation and more like the city telling us it’ll see us again soon.
More Local Favourites, If You Have Extra Time
A few more we couldn’t leave out, worth folding into whichever day has room.
Piccolo Forno in North Beach is the kind of place a neighborhood keeps quietly for itself — small, warm, and beloved enough that a local we spoke with almost didn’t want to recommend it to strangers. It fits well as a quiet lunch stop on Day Three, before or after Vesuvio.
WHAT LOCALS & REAL VISITORS SAY
“I live in the neighborhood and it’s my absolute favorite restaurant! I know everyone there and they know my exact order, same thing every time. I was going to recommend it, but I didn’t think a non-local would enjoy it since it’s so small and intimate. But I’m glad that you did. It’s definitely a gem.”
True Laurel and Trick Dog, both in the Mission, are the cocktail bars locals actually go to — popular enough to have a following, but not remotely built for tourists. Either makes a good stand-in for the Hideout on Day One if you want to keep the night going a little longer.
The Itinerary, At a Glance
Screenshot this page, or print it, whatever gets it in your pocket for the actual trip.
Make It Yours
That’s the plan. Three days, in the order we’d actually do them, with nothing on this list that requires booking six weeks out or fighting a crowd for a photo.
The thing we want you to take from this, more than any single stop, is that the best version of San Francisco isn’t a list you check off, it’s a rhythm you fall into. A hill in the morning. A street you didn’t plan to fall in love with. A door in the back of a bar most people walk right past. That’s the whole city, if you let it be.
We’ve walked every block of this itinerary more times than we can count, and it still surprises us. Go make it yours. Send us a photo from the top of Bernal Hill if you catch a good sunset up there, we’d love to see it.
Cheers,
Elliot
Frequently Asked Questions
Bernal Heights Hill and Musée Mécanique, both built into Day One and Day Two of this itinerary, plus the Salesforce rooftop park and the Seward Street Slides — genuine hidden gems most first-time visitors never find because they aren’t near the standard tourist route.
Walk Valencia Street and Clement Street the way this itinerary lays them out on Day One and Day Two. Both are real, lived-in neighborhood streets locals actually use, not attractions built around a photo.
Find the Hideout at Dalva, a speakeasy hidden behind another Mission bar, on Day One evening. Ride the free Seward Street concrete slides on Day Two. Both are built into this itinerary at the times we’d actually do them.
Day Three of this itinerary is built entirely around it: biking the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito, taking the ferry back, and, time allowing, Angel Island for bigger views and far fewer visitors than Alcatraz.
Yes. Every stop across all three days is reachable by walking, public transit, ferry, or a short rideshare. The only day you might consider renting a bike is Day Three, for the bridge crossing, and even that has a walking option.
Worth twenty minutes for the sea lions on Day Two, on the way to Musée Mécanique. This itinerary deliberately trades the rest of the Wharf’s time for the Ferry Building Marketplace, which locals and destination experts alike recommend instead.
