Top Things to Do in San Francisco With Kids
1 Check Out a Cable Car
San Francisco is a great city to visit for people of all ages, but especially for the younger set. Its small size and relatively few tall buildings make it seem more comfortable to little kids than the looming skyscrapers of larger cities.
There are more things to do here than can be covered in any one vacation (or perhaps even any dozen). To be sure you and the kids have a great time, click through our list for a few things to do that the whole family will enjoy.
If you need more help to plan your trip to San Francisco with the kids, look no further than the San Francisco Vacation Planner. It covers where to stay when to go - and more.
Take the Kids on a Cable Car Ride
It's not often you can see a National Landmark and take a ride at the same time, but that's exactly what you can do on a San Francisco cable car. They're an old-fashioned mode of transportation kept alive by the public's enthusiasm for the experience.
2Ocean Beach is Best for Kids
At the beach, kids can let their imaginations go wild, building sand castles, flying kites and playing tag with the waves.
In San Francisco, the best family beach is (not so imaginatively) named Ocean Beach. It's on the city's west side, outside the Golden Gate, the last bit of sand before the Pacific. Its long, flat stretch of sand is perfect for beach play and even if you just stand and watch, you'll see people doing all kinds of things: kite-sailing, skimboarding, fishing and surfing.
Nearby is the Cliff House, where you can have a meal. Behind it, you'll find the Camera Obscura housed in a funny-looking little building that resembles an old-fashioned camera. It's fun to look at and surprisingly lovely inside, but holds no appeal for smaller children. Just down the beach is the Beach Chalet, a microbrewery restaurant with nice ocean views (and better prices and food than the Cliff House).
3Check Out Chinatown
Chinatown is colorful and energetic and if you haven't been there before, it looks a bit exotic. Chinatown is also full of shops selling all kinds of cool things kids enjoy like tacky souvenirs, kites, and fortune cookies. The proactive parent can make sure the kids learn a little about Chinese culture along the way, too
Pros and Cons
Chinatown is a good place for the kids to buy themselves a souvenir and they'll love watching that goofy contraption at the fortune cookie factory make the little treats (and eating the bag of them you buy while there).
Go on a weekday for smaller crowds, but if your child doesn't like crowds and noise or unfamiliar smells that waft out of the herbalist shops, Chinatown could be a bad choice any day of the week. For anyone, it gets so crowded at Chinese New Year that you can barely move on the sidewalks.
4Kids Love Pier 39
If your kids would like to take home something with San Francisco written all over it, Pier 39's souvenir and specialty shops will tempt them to spend (or ask you to). There's also a double-decker Venetian carousel in the center of the complex, frequent free performances that kids love on the stage near the end of the pier and the Aquarium of the Bay, a unique, walk-through underwater attraction. On the west side of the complex, you'll find where the California sea lions hang out.
San Francisco has great street performers and most kids love to watch them. You'll find some of the best of them between Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf.
Pros and Cons of Going to Pier 39 with Kids
Children (and the adults) enjoy watching the sea lions who have taken over the small marina beside the pier. It's a good place to get a bite to eat and when the kids are ready to "go," Pier 39 has free public restrooms.
5Get the Kids Some Wheels
When I say get some wheels, I'm not advocating buying a Ferrari for a four-year-old or having the teenagers retrofitted with spoked rims, but biking, skating and other unusual wheeled transport is a great way to see San Francisco and get active at the same time.
Don't expect to see the whole city from pedal-powered transport, though. Unless your whole family are avid bikers and strong pedalers, you'll be limited to the waterfront and other non-hilly parts, but there's plenty to see there, including many of the most popular tourist spots.
Families on Wheels - Most Popular Spots
For an active, do-it-yourself tour of San Francisco, rent bicycles from Blazing Saddles, Bay City Bike or Bike and Roll. They'll give you a map with several route ideas, the most fun being a two-hour ride that will lead you over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and back on the ferry.
6Ghirardelli Square: Chocolate and More
The name Ghirardelli may sound familiar because they make chocolate candy. They haven't made it at Ghirardelli Square since the 1960s, but the former Pioneer Woolen Mills was their manufacturing site for almost seven decades before that. Today it's a shopping and dining complex centered on their "Chocolate Manufactory" and Soda Fountain. The retail shop is a good place to buy San Francisco-themed chocolates for the chocoholics back home.
The chocolate lovers in your family will enjoy the soda fountain treats, shakes, and sundaes, which are more than big enough to share. Otherwise, you'll find a small shopping area and a couple of restaurants.
Pros and Cons
A trip to Ghirardelli could easily overload the kids' energy meter, but it's also a fun place for a sweet vacation treat. To bring the bouncing-off-the-walls level back down to normal, head for the park just down the hill or hike up Hyde to the top of Lombard Street and back down again.
7Fisherman's Wharf, Iconic San Francisco
Fisherman's Wharf is an iconic San Francisco sight, with colorful boats, street performers and lots of those goofy tourist attractions that many kids love to visit.
Among those attractions are the Wax Museum and Ripley's Believe it Or Not, but if you can pry the kids away from them, try the Musee Mecanique, located off the main street near Fisherman's Grotto. It's a collection of old-fashioned arcade games that somehow still hold appeal even for youngsters used to the latest digital amusements.
Kids with maritime interests can get them satisfied at Fishermans Wharf, too. The Liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien and the Pampanito submarine are open for tours, as is the Hyde Street Pier Maritime Museum.
8Take the Kids to Alcatraz
Is a former penitentiary really an appropriate place to take kids? Absolutely. Most of them enjoy the ferry ride to reach it, and on the island, they're oddly fascinated by the old prison.
Entry to Alcatraz itself is free, but you’ll have to pay for transportation. It's a long-ish boat ride to get there and requires a bit of planning. Buy tickets in advance to avoid standing in line and possible disappointment because Alcatraz tours often sell out.
The line to get onto the ferry can be long, but there's a lot to watch while you wait - people, sea lions, and other goings-on. For kids on the go, an even better strategy is to wait until a few minutes before sailing time to get into the line. After all, the last person on the boat arrives at the Alcatraz pier at the same time as the one who stood in line for an hour.
9Don't Tell Them It's a Museum
These places are so much fun to visit that if you don't tell the kids they're museums, they'll have such a good time that they won't realize they're learning something.
Some museums are fun, while others are educational; the Exploratorium is the best of both worlds. It’s a hands-on science museum that’s sure to keep kids of all ages engaged and teach them something, too.
Depending on their inclinations and what's available where you live, kids a bit older might enjoy the Children’s Creativity Museum, an interactive art museum (previously called just Zeum) where kids can learn how to create claymation movies, music videos, and much more.
If your budding engineer was fascinated by the cable cars, try the Cable Car Museum. Get off the cable car at Mason and Washington and watch the cables being pulled by giant motors, then go downstairs to see the giant sheaves, big wheels that keep it all straight.
10Check Out Crookedest - aka Lombard - Street
Lombard Street is billed as the "crookedest street," so how could kids resist seeing it? They'll get a kick out of sitting in a car driving down it, squealing in mock fear at every turn, and there are plenty of them in this short, one-block-long stretch of street.
Almost as much fun as driving on Lombard is walking down it (or up), watching all the goings-on. During spring and summer, you can capture photos like the one above with all the pink flowers in bloom.
Pros and Cons
Once you've been there, you'll have bragging rights to having seen the crookedest street - and probably photos to prove it.
Know your family's patience factor. Lombard Street is very popular, which on a busy day translates to a long wait before your turn to drive down. It takes less than a minute, which might seem like a little time for all the hoopla, but we've known people to wait hours for roller coaster rides that last only a few seconds.
Top Things to Do in San Francisco With Kids
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