San Francisco
Founded by Spanish colonists in 1776, they built a fort on what is now the Golden Gate and founded a mission named for Francisco de Asís. The city includes several islands located within the bay, the most famous being Alcatraz. It is a city to relax and enjoy its cultural activity, one of the richest in the country and a mandatory stop when traveling to the West Coast of the United States. Nearby San Francisco is Silicon Valley, a large center for technology and cybernetics research. The city is also an important financial and banking center, as it is the headquarters of more than thirty financial institutions. It is currently the second American city with the best quality of life, only surpassed by Honolulu.
There are many tourist attractions in San Francisco, these being the ones you cannot miss:
- Golden Gate: It is a red bridge 28 meters wide and 2.7 kilometers long that, since 1937, has crossed the strait to unite San Francisco with the county of Marin, and which has been the setting for many movies.
- Victorian Houses: Haight Ashbury is undoubtedly one of the most attractive districts for the tourist visiting this city, it is also known as The Haight or The Upper Haight. Located in the highest part of the city (north of Market Street and near the Castro neighborhood and the Golden Gate. This district achieved great fame in the 1960s as the international center of the hippie movement. The largest example of this type of houses is in Alamo Square, a park from which you can see the typical image of a row of these Victorian-style houses called Painted Ladies, which appear in various movies, television shows and advertisements After the Golden Gate, the most photographed place in San Francisco.
- Transamerica Pyramid Building: Although the building no longer contains the headquarters of the Transamérica Corporation, who moved his US headquarters to Baltimore, Maryland, is still associated with the company and appears in its logo.At 260 meters high, it was in 1972 upon its completion, the eighth tallest skyscraper in the world It was the tallest in the city until 2018, when its height was surpassed by the Salesforce Tower.
- A ride on the tram: The original tram is a funicular system inaugurated on June 18, 1878 and which had 23 lines, although it currently only has 3.
- Chinatown: one of the oldest and most established Chinatowns in the United States. Behind the famous Dragon Gate stretches a maze of busy alleys lined with traditional restaurants and dim sum bars, as well as herbalists, bakeries, souvenir shops, cocktail bars and karaoke bars. Here you can also visit ornate temples, such as Tien How, and the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum.
- Alcatraz Island: Well-known for housing the most famous prison in the world. Locally called The Rock (La Roca), it is a small island located in the center of the San Francisco Bay. In it is the Alcatraz Lighthouse. It formerly served as a military fortification, as a military prison, and later as a federal prison until 1963. It became a national park in 1972. Today, it is a historic site administered by the National Park Service and is open for tours. Tourists can reach the island by ferry from Fisherman's Wharf Pier 33.
