What to do: 8 hour layover in San Francisco!

Hello, readers!

Welcome to another travel post, and in this one I’m going to describe our little adventures through San Francisco!

As I mentioned in my post about our trip to Australia, our plans to layover in China were cancelled due to Covid-19, so the best way we found to get to Sydney was through San Francisco. The cheapest flights actually had an 8 hour long layover in the city, which we really didn’t mind since we read it was possible to get to the city and enjoy it for a bit within this time frame. As Portugal residents, we only had to ask for an ETA to be able to leave the airport, and it cost us 14 EUR each. We were able to request it online, which was super convenient.

Since we had limited time, we tried to detail our itinerary as much as possible for both days (on the way to Australia and on the way back). I started by writing down all the places we would like to visit, divide them in two groups by which place was close to another one, and see if riding a bike through our itinerary didn’t take us longer than we were allowed to be there.

This was our initial plan:

Day 1:

Battery Spencer

Golden Gate Overlook

Lombard Street

Fisherman’s Wharf

Pier 39

Day 2:

Chinatown

California Street

Mr Holmes Bakehouse

Painted Ladies

I will start by describing our first layover, that did not go as we planned at all.

We arrived at the San Francisco airport at 2:45pm, and were only able to leave customs at around 16h! The queue to show our passports was quite long, and it took ages for us to leave the airport. Since we were running against the clock it was so frustrating. After we got out, we took the BARF (which is their metro line) from the airport to Powell Street, which is right in the center of San Francisco. The train leaves every 15 minutes and takes 28 minutes from the airport to Powell Street. It cost us about 17 USD for a round ticket for each of us.

We arrived at Powell Street shortly after leaving the airport. This street is really famous due to the typical San Francisco trams - you will be able to see a lot of them here since this is the place where they turn around. I have to say that Powell Street didn’t give me the first impression of the city that I was expecting. The area looks a bit dirty, it smells a lot like someone is smoking weed, there are lots of homeless people making so much noise (and noise in general). I heard that California has some really good aid plans for homeless people and that is why so many go to this state, and this might justify the enormous quantity there (and I come from Lisbon, where there is also a lot, and I still was quite impressed).

We were planning on renting bikes and visiting those 5 places, however our SIM cards were not working in the city and didn’t allow us to turn on data. So we had to run through a few stores to find one that sold data cards, and we spent 20 USD for two cards at a supermarket nearby. We thought that these cards were already topped up, but guess what, of course they were not. Only after paying for them we discovered it would cost us about 40 USD to charge EACH card, and since we were just spending a few hours there, we absolutely did not want to pay for this. Now, the funniest part about all this: after two hours of thinking about what we were going to do we found out the street actually has free wifi.

So we connected, rented the bikes through the Uber app and off we went! We had to cut our plans in half because we lost so much time, so we only ended up going down Powell Street, riding along the piers and visiting Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf. This ride is super nice, and the city is really bike-friendly. Pier 39 is a really cool area - it looks like a movie setting, and this was more the San Francisco vibe I was expecting. We kinda rushed through the pier since we didn’t have a lot of time, but were still able to have a walk around and see the sea lions before heading back.

On our second day in San Francisco we ran to customs so we could get ahead in the queue, and we were the first ones to get out, so in 10 minutes we were already leaving the airport. We took the BARF again, and since we already knew how to rent the bikes (this time we actually rented scooters), we were in Powell Street for just a couple of minutes and headed to the Golden Gate bridge since we just wanted to have a look at it. On our way there, we actually stumbled into the Painted Ladies, which is a really famous set of colorful Victorian houses. This is a really cute photo spot with a nice little park in front of it - is we had a bit more time, it might have been a good place to rest for a bit.

Our GPS lost connection, so we kinda improvised our way afterwards. After starting riding again, we went across the classical San Francisco image we see in movies: the really (really!) steep heels that made us take the scooters by hand, the beautiful houses, quiet streets… This is the vibe I was looking for, and if I ever go back to the city, this is what I want to experience more of. If I’m not mistaken (since, again, our GPS wasn’t working) we were in the Pacific Heights area. It looks like this might be the fancy neighbourhood of the city!

We got to the Golden Gate, however it was so foggy that we could only see a small tip of the bridge - apparently this is common in the city so prepare your trip well and check the weather conditions if you are planning on gazing at the famous San Francisco icon.

We were a bit lost after starting our ride again, but we ended up passing by the Palace of Fine Arts. This was not on our plans, but what were our plans by then anyway? This was a really beautiful place to find so unexpectedly, and we admired the palace and the huge lake for a while.

We rode along Crissy Field East beach, crossed the Great Meadow Park (so many puppies here!!) and got back to Fisherman’s Wharf.

If you follow along my travel posts, you probably know we always try to find handmade souvenirs. We stopped our ride in this area and ran the stores trying to find some good souvenirs to take home with us. The handmade part was a bit unsuccessful, but for someone looking for San Francisco merchandise this is the perfect place! There are plenty of huge stores full of t-shirts, magnets, postcards and basically every single object you could ever imagine. All of them with typical San Francisco icons such as the Golden Gate, the sea lions and the trams.

We wandered the streets, crossed the San Francisco Chinatown and headed to see the famous California Street. This is a street that’s really famous because you get a little bit of everything that characterizes the city - the trams going up and down, the steep hills and the Golden Gate peeking at the end behind the hill. We stopped for some photos - which ended up being a disaster, ahah. Short amount of time and trams running up and down made it a little hard.

We headed back to Powell Street. After we dropped off our scooters, we still had a bit of time, so we went to see the trams turning around and enjoy our last minutes before departing for a 10 hour flight.

So, at the end of the day, we ended up not seeing everything we wanted. I heard a lot of nice things about Mr. Holmes Bakehouse, and since I’m all sugar things, I really wanted to try some of their stuff. I would have enjoyed some Golden Gate viewpoints such as Battery Spencer or the Golden Gate overlook, but I wasn’t even that sad since it was so foggy. Lombard Street is also another iconic street, known for its tight pink curves down a steep hill, that I would love to have seen. What made it so hard to do it all was mainly the fact that we didn’t have the internet to rent our bikes immediately after arriving.

However, the most important lesson we learned from this layover was: we didn’t calculate well the costs of renting the bikes and scooters. On the second layover (which was the longest one we rented the scooters), we ended up paying around 40 USD each. This is crazy! We could have easily requested several Ubers, and splitting it between the two of us would have ended up being way cheaper (according to the Uber app estimates, the whole itinerary for the second day would have been around 56 USD). Not to mention the comfort of not having to pull the scooters up the steep San Francisco hills and the possibility to have been able to see everything we wanted. I think of this now and it makes me so mad, ahah.

If you’re on the run to visit San Francisco in a couple of hours, I believe asking for an Uber ride will be the best option.

Recapping this whole experience, I think this was the most exhausting days of my life! Keeping in mind we did this between two very long flights, I think we made the most of it. It makes me really sad that we didn’t get to enjoy it to the fullest, especially the first time we went there, but it made me really excited to go back to San Francisco one day and visit the city properly!