Car Hire San Francisco - Mini guide to San Francisco

With it’s free-spirited reputation, odd topography and beautiful bay area setting, there is no city in America quite like San Francisco.

Simply wandering around the city is a treat, largely due to its hilly, strangely planned grid that give rise to many wonderful photo opportunities. One legacy arising from the steep gradients is the unique, antique-looking trams which visitors all love to ride.

Many cable cars originated in Union Square, San Francisco's downtown tourist center which comprises of an odd collection of shops and hotels, flower vendors and homeless people. SoMa ('South of Market St') is a combination of lofty office buildings spilling over from the Financial District, there is museum precinct around Yerba Buena Gardens and the late night entertainment scene along Folsom and 11th Streets.

Chinatown is one of San Francisco’s most enduring features. A few blocks north of Union Square, it is densely packed with restaurants and tacky curio shops mingling with its 30,000 distinctly Chinese residents.

North Beach (hardly a beach), just north, is a lively stretch of strip joints, bars, cafes and restaurants that started as the city's Italian quarter and gave birth to the Beats in the 1950s. It includes Telegraph Hill and the iconic Coit Tower landmark. Beyond North Beach is Fisherman's Wharf, a somewhat kitch and overcrowded area of tourist shops, hotels, odd museums and eateries. Pier 39 is the main entertainment precinct and launching point for bay trips and ferries to Alcatraz.

Wanna-be hippies can head for the intersection of Haight-Ashbury streets, locus of the flower power movement in the 60s.Castro, to the south east, is the gay epi-centre of this distinctly ‘camp’-friendly city.

The major suburbs in San Francisco are: Brisbane, Colma, Daly City, Diamond Heights, Millbrae, Pacifica, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Mateo and Sunset District.