San Francisco for families
Golden Gate Bridge is the walk across the suspension bridge on the San Francisco Bay. Alcatraz Island is the ferry crossing and the cellhouse audio tour. Lombard Street is the crooked block, walked on the sidewalk rather than driven.
San Francisco for families with kids, in numbers
- Score for families
- 7.8 out of 10
- Picks on this page
- 36 places across 3 lists, led by Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, Lombard Street
Questions families with kids ask about San Francisco
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Family-friendly
San Francisco is solidly family-friendly, though cold summer fog catches unprepared families off guard. The California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park and the Exploratorium at Pier 15 are two of the best children's science museums in the US. Stroller logistics depend on which neighborhood you pick. Flat stretches along the Embarcadero work. The hills of Noe Valley do not.
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Is it safe?
San Francisco is safe enough for a solo trip, scoring 6 out of 10 overall with a solo-traveler safety score of 5.8/10 (see the TTDI Solo-Safety Index). Smashed rental-car windows, phone snatches on Market Street, and open drug use in the Tenderloin are the real risks to plan around, while violent crime against visitors remains rare and clusters on a handful of downtown blocks.
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What to pack
Layers are the single non-negotiable for San Francisco. June fog keeps temperatures around 12-15°C at Ocean Beach while the Mission District hits 20°C the same afternoon. Pack a windproof shell, fleece mid-layer, and walking shoes with grip for the steep hills. Leave the shorts at home until September.
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Getting around
Clipper card on Muni and BART for the backbone, Uber or Lyft to dodge the hills, and your legs for flat stretches in the Mission and Marina. BART runs from SFO to downtown Powell Street in 30 minutes for about $9.65. Cable cars are a ride, not transit. $8 each way, expect a 45-minute line at Powell and Market.
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Best time to visit
September and October are San Francisco's real summer. The fog that blankets the city from June through August retreats, afternoon highs reach 70-75°F along the Embarcadero, and hotel rates sit 15-20% below peak. First-time visitors who arrive in July expecting California sunshine find 55°F grey skies and damp Pacific wind instead.
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Curated for families with kids
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Must-see attractions
San Francisco's essentials are not one kind of thing, and a list that pretends otherwise sells the city short. This one runs from a mission dating from 1776 to a Russian Orthodox cathedral dated 1965, and from a suspension bridge on the San Francisco Bay to a mini-park in the Castro District. The list is for travellers who want the postcard sights done properly and then want to see how the city prays, reads, remembers, and plays when nobody is selling it anything. Take the icons slowly, and give the quieter addresses the same respect.
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Best free attractions
San Francisco's free hours are the ones the city runs on: fog wrapping the coastal cliffs, drum circles on a park slope, tai-chi mornings on a neighborhood square, eucalyptus stands and hillside vantage points that keep costing nothing but time. This list favours the outdoors and the civic: parks, plazas, and gardens catalogued as such by the public record, from the National Register-listed Presidio to a historic Japanese garden the city has kept intact. The twelve places below are the ones locals treat as extensions of their own living rooms, and none of them ask for a ticket at the door: the paid attractions inside them are optional; the parks themselves are not. Skip the guided-cable-car queue for a day and walk instead. Bring layers, wear shoes you can climb hills in, and use the citations for the addresses and the official sites; the rest of it is on foot.
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Best museums
San Francisco's museums refuse to agree on what a museum is, and that is the best thing about them. The list below runs from a modern art museum and a natural history museum to a non-profit LGBT historical society and a wax museum, with stops for cartoon art, cable cars and antique vibrators along the way. Some of these are full-day institutions with a switchboard and a programme to study in advance, while others are a single address and a website that reward the visitor who reads before walking in. We have ranked them by how much of your limited time we think they deserve, not by size. This list is for the traveller who would rather see 2 places properly than 6 in a blur, and for the local who has been meaning to go for years. One rule applies to all 12: check the museum's own site before you leave, pick one thing to see, and give it your full attention. The big names will still be there tomorrow. The small ones are the visits you will end up talking about.
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Browse experiences
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- For first-timers
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