Iconic San Franciso Landmarks To Enjoy From The Hop-On Hop-Off Bus!

I am back from a two week vacation/family get together in Northern California, which we were lucky enough to squeeze in before the unfortunate latest Corona restrictions, sigh. And yes, that means lots and lots of travel photos to share with you! So lets get started! What does one do when you plane arrives at 6 am but your airbnb check in isn’t until 3 pm, and you are of course exhausted from the 15 hour nonstop redeye?

First of all, you find a place to store your bags, via one of the many online suitcase storage apps now available. Our location was a little sketchy, a liquor store on Market street, but it was the closest to our rental, so I took a chance. Make sure to take photos of all bags that you store anywhere!
Get something to eat: we opted for the wonderful kosher bakery/restaurant called Frena, not terribly far from the location of our bag check. Totally recommend the place, but the neighborhood on 5th Street between Market and Minna is best avoided when walking, if possible. Some very sad things going on there. Looking for something like Falafel or Shawarma, Israeli style? You are in luck, there is a new kosher meat restaurant called Limmonana, just down the street, also on 6th.
Ah, okay, fed, but tired, so now what? Get on the hop-on hop-off bus, and just keep riding it until time for check in! Our airbnb was close to one of the bus stops, so yippee! i later took an Uber to get the bags, and the driver didn’t have change for cash, so gave me the round trip fare on the house. Nice start to our vacation!

I’ll admit, I used to think that the hop-on hop-off buses were for silly tourists, but I have since come to realize that they are actually a great way to get to know a city when you arrive. The one in Montreal is overpriced and not worth it, but the one in Barcelona, wow! Okay, lets take a look at some of the iconic artchitecture in San Francisco as view from the top deck of the bus!

Above: the San Franciso Ferry Building

The San Francisco Ferry Building is a terminal for ferries that travel across the San Francisco Bay, a food hall and an office building. It is located on The Embarcadero in San Francisco, California. On top of the building is a 245-foot-tall (75 m) clock tower with four clock dials, each 22 feet (6.7 m) in diameter, which can be seen from Market Street, a main thoroughfare of the city.

Designed in 1892 by American architect A. Page Brown in the Beaux Arts style, the ferry building was completed in 1898. At its opening, it was the largest project undertaken in the city up to that time. Brown designed the clock tower after the 12th-century Giralda bell tower in Seville, Spain, and the entire length of the building on both frontages is based on an arched arcade. The ferry terminal is a designated San Francisco landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Above: The Transamerica Pyramid

The Transamerica Pyramid at 600 Montgomery Street between Clay and Washington Streets in the Financial District of San Francisco, California, United States, is a 48-story futurist skyscraper and the second tallest building in the San Francisco skyline. It was the tallest building in San Francisco from its completion in 1972 until 2018 when the newly constructed Salesforce Tower surpassed its height. The building no longer houses the headquarters of the Transamerica Corporation, which moved its U.S. headquarters to Baltimore, Maryland. However, the building is still associated with the company by being depicted on the company’s logo. Designed by architect William Pereira, the building stands at 853 feet (260 m). On completion in 1972 it was the eighth-tallest building in the world.

Above: The Sentinel Building

Columbus Tower, also known as the Sentinel Building, is a mixed-use building in San Francisco, California, completed in 1907. The distinctive copper-green Flatiron style structure is bounded by Columbus Avenue, Kearny Street, and Jackson Street; straddling the North Beach, Chinatown, and Financial District neighborhoods of the city. Much of the building is occupied by Francis Ford Coppola’s film studio American Zoetrope, and the ground floor houses a cafe named after the company. The Sentinel Building is listed as San Francisco Designated Landmark No. 33.

Above: Coit Tower

Coit Tower is a 210-foot (64 m) tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California, offering panoramic views over the city and the bay. The tower, in the city’s Pioneer Park, was built between 1932 and 1933 using Lillie Hitchcock Coit’s bequest to beautify the city of San Francisco. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 29, 2008.

The art deco tower, built of unpainted reinforced concrete, was designed by architects Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard. The interior features fresco murals in the American Social Realism style, painted by 25 different onsite artists and their numerous assistants, plus two additional paintings installed after creation offsite. (Worth a visit!) Also known as the Coit Memorial Tower, it was dedicated to the volunteer firemen who had died in San Francisco’s five major fires. Although a story claims that the tower was designed to resemble a fire hose nozzle, the resemblance is coincidental.

If you are up for a great San Francisco adventure and are on the Embarcadero, and are not totally out shape, climb the Filbert Street steps from nearby Levi Plaza to get to Coit Tower, Truly a treat! Incase you missed it, here is my post about climbing the steps here.

Above: The Hibernia Bank

The Hibernia Bank, headquartered in San Francisco, California, was founded in April 1859 as the Hibernia Savings and Loan Society. In 1892, the company built a Beaux-Arts headquarters at 1 Jones Street at the corner of McAllister and Market Streets, designed by Albert Pissis. Slightly damaged in the 1906 earthquake and fire, it re-opened again just five weeks after the calamity; Pissis designed an addition to the building in 1908.

The bank left the building in 1985, and, after a brief period in which it was used by the San Francisco Police Department, the building was vacant for decades, until it was restored and renovated in 2016. As of 2017, the building, re-branded as “One Jones”, is being subdivided for leasing to tenants who need less than the building’s overall 42,000 square feet (3,900 m²) of space.The Hibernia Bank Building is a designated San Francisco landmark.

Above: San Francisco City Hall

San Francisco City Hall is the seat of government for the City and County of San Francisco, California. Re-opened in 1915 in its open space area in the city’s Civic Center, it is a Beaux-Arts monument to the City Beautiful movement that epitomized the high-minded American Renaissance of the 1880s to 1917. The structure’s dome is taller than that of the United States Capitol by 42 feet (13 m). The present building replaced an earlier City Hall that was destroyed during the 1906 earthquake, which was two blocks from the present one.

The principal architect was Arthur Brown, Jr., of Bakewell & Brown, whose attention to the finishing details extended to the doorknobs and the typeface to be used in signage. Brown also designed the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, Veterans Building, Temple Emanuel, Coit Tower and the Federal office building at 50 United Nations Plaza.

Above: Queen Anne revival Victorian architecture, seen in great numbers in San Francisco.

With its gingerbread trim, peaked roof, and multiple arches, this elegant home is the epitome of San Francisco’s Queen Anne revival. Named for an eighteenth century English monarch, this delicate style often features turrets and balconies, and something known as the Captain’s Tower, seen here. Not actually a separate room, but results in great curved window seats in the interior spaces!

Above: Skystar Ferris wheel, a temporary installation in Golden Gate Park

The Skystar Ferris wheel attraction was initially installed in the park as part of Golden Gate Park’s 150th anniversary celebration in 2020. The wheel was slated to spin for one year, but the pandemic brought the wheel to a halt. SkyStar briefly opened last October for six weeks at limited capacity. The Ferris wheel was allowed to extend their contract beyond the originally agreed upon time frame as a way to recoup some of the earnings lost due to the pandemic.

Above: The Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the one-mile-wide (1.6 km) strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, California—the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula—to Marin County, carrying both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco and California. It was initially designed by engineer Joseph Strauss in 1917. It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The Frommer’s travel guide describes the Golden Gate Bridge as “possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world. At the time of its opening in 1937, it was both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world, with a main span of 4,200 feet (1,280 m) and a total height of 746 feet (227 m).

Above: The Palace of Fine Arts

The Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California is a monumental structure originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in order to exhibit works of art. Completely rebuilt from 1964 to 1974,^[1] it is the only structure from the Exposition that survives on site. The most prominent building of the complex, a 162 feet (49 m) highopen rotunda, is enclosed by a lagoon on one side, and is neighboring a large, curved exhibition center on the other side, which is separated from the lagoon by colonnades. As of 2019, the exhibition center (one of San Francisco’s largest single-story buildings) was being used as a venue for events such as weddings or trade fairs.

Conceived to evoke a decaying ruin of ancient Rome, the Palace of Fine Arts became one of San Francisco’s most recognizable landmarks. A renovation of the lagoon, walkways, and a seismic retrofit were completed in early 2009.

Above: The Ghirardelli Tower

The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company is an American confectioner, wholly owned by Swiss confectioner Lindt & Sprüngli. The company was founded by and is named after Italian chocolatierDomenico Ghirardelli, who, after working in South America, moved to California. The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, named for its founder Domenico Ghirardelli born in 1817 in Rapallo, Italy, was incorporated in 1852, and is the third-oldest chocolate company in the United States, after Baker’s Chocolate and Whitman’s. The tower was built in a Chateau Blois style, and contructed in 1915. It stands on the corner of North Point and Larkin Street. The tower was designed by architect William Mooser.

Okay friends, that is it for my introduction to San Francisco via a spotlight on the landmarks I photographed from the top open seating area on the the hop on hop off bus, stay tuned for more!