1 Day Itinerary in San Francisco including Alcatraz, Lombard Street, and the Golden Gate Bridge
Continuing on with our Northern California trip, we took a day to explore San Francisco. This was our itinerary:
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Where we stayed:
We stayed (1) night at The Grand Hotel in Sunnyvale, CA since we spent the day we arrived checking out San Jose, The Winchester Mystery House and Santa Cruz. Sunnyvale is about 50 minute outside of the city. If you want to read more about our time in San Jose, you can check out that blog post here!
Parking at the Pier – we parked at pier 27 for the day. This pier/lot is a short walk to the Alcatraz Cruise port.
Alcatraz Island
Our first adventure of the day was Alcatraz Island. We purchased tickets through the Alcatraz Island Cruises website. Once you plug in the date you want to visit on the ticket calendar, a list of times and availability will appear. Tickets are around $39 and cruises leave at various times throughout the day. We chose the 9:00 AM cruise time.
We did the self-guided audio tour around the island and through the prison. They do offer a free tour guide that takes you around if you prefer that. We spent about 3 hours over on the island checking everything out. The audio tour was a lot of fun, the views were amazing and there is so much history to learn!
It is truly an incredible experience and we highly recommend checking out Alcatraz Island if you ever get the chance!
After returning from Alcatraz Island, we took some time to walk around the piers, check-out some shops and soak up the scenery.
Lombard Street
A short walk from the pier is Lombard Street. Lombard Street is a major tourist attraction and is known for being a steep street with eight hairpin turns…you just have to see it for yourself!
Alamo Square – This is a residential neighborhood and park..you might recognize the houses “The Painted Ladies” from the intro of full house!
Golden Gate Bridge
Our last stop for the day was the Golden Gate Bridge. We parked at the south end of the bridge near the Visitor Center. We walked across the bridge and utilized the pedestrian path that goes under the bridge to cross over to Battery Spencer.
Battery Spencer is the best viewpoint of the Golden Gate Bridge! Battery Spencer is located on the North side of the bridge and will give you that famous photo opp of the bridge and city in the background! Battery Spencer actually has a lot of history behind it too.
We spent a few hours just soaking up the jaw-dropping views before heading back down to the pedestrian path to walk back across the bridge to our car on the southern end of the bridge. As we were walking across the bridge, the sun was setting. We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day!
Our next stop was a 3 hour drive out to The Groveland Hotel just outside of Yosemite National Park.
Click hereto read our 1 day itinerary for exploring Yosemite National Park!