3 Days In San Francisco With Teenagers, Part 1 – Bike The Bridge To Sausalito, Then Visit The Fortune Cookie Factory

When visiting San Francisco with teenagers on our California road trip, we wanted to make the Golden Gate Bridge the focus for one of our days in the city and so arranged to a guide tour to bike the bridge across the water to Sausalito. For a contrast, in the afternoon we then planned a walking trip through San Francisco’s Chinatown neighbourhood in search of the Fortune Cookie Factory. As we didn’t know how much energy we would have left after our morning’s bike ride, then we kept our itinerary flexible and see what happened. We turned out to have quite a lot of energy so I think we were feeling inspired by this incredible city….

Bike the Bridge with Blazing Saddles

For an incredible introduction to San Francisco, book the Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito Cycling Tour on Get Your Guide with Blazing Saddles. This 3 hour guided tour was a great activity to do with teenagers, although you can do the trip as a self-guided adventure if you prefer (1.5 hours). This tour ends on the other side of the bridge in Sausalito, an 8-mile cycle, before catching the ferry back to Fisherman’s Wharf.

After a safety briefing and getting fit-out with bikes and helmets, we set off with our guide towards the Golden Gate Bridge. It takes quite a while to reach the start of the bridge but there was plenty to see on the way:

• Aquatic Park Cove – with a curved pier which creates a sheltered harbour where, even on this fresh morning, locals were swimming.  There are great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz in the bay from the pier. 
• Historical buildings – including the first Dr Pepper factory, the Del Monte canning factory and the Ghirardelli chocolate factory.
• Fort Mason – a former military post now used for festivals, galleries, and food truck nights.
• Crissy Fields – a former airfield and part of the Presidio military installation, now a park and marina area.

Meanwhile, the Golden Gate Bridge had been getting closer and closer, and the views of this iconic structure was improving with every turn. Our guide kept giving us bridge facts along the way:

• The suspension bridge is made of enough cable to go around the world 3 times over. 
• Amazingly it only took a couple of years to build and opened in 1937.
• The bridge is constantly being repainted, but has only ever been fully repainted twice.
• There are 5 different authorities policing the bridge including a dedicated bridge police force.

The rules of using the bridge are taken very seriously – stop only if you have to, pull over and give way to faster road-bike cyclists and commuters. Basically, do not get in anyone’s way.

The bridge is very high at 227 meters (746 feet) above the water. The towers themselves are 152 meters (500 feet) above the road on the bridge. Sadly, because the bridge is so high, it has a lot of jumpers, the majority of whom do not survive. As a result, there are phones all the way along the bridge giving crisis counselling helplines for those in need. One of the key jobs of the bridge police is to talk down potential jumpers – what an important responsibility.

The opportunity to bike the bridge in San Francisco with teenagers was a fantastic experience and the views were memorable. As you pass the towers you can see the Art Deco detailing more clearly and marvel at just how tall they are.

Freewheel down to Sausalito

At the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge, you reach the Marin Headlands before descending downhill to Sausalito, an extremely attractive town on the water. The downhill section of the bike ride was so long and steep that our hands got tired on the brakes!

If you have watched The Last Thing He Told Me with Jennifer Garner, then you will recognise Sausalito as the setting for Jennifer’s incredible houseboat home. There are several docks where the houseboats are parked up, and one of them is apparently where Otis Reading lived and wrote Sitting on the dock of the bay. I loved the colourful post-boxes for the houseboats.

We enjoyed resting our legs in the sun on the outdoor deck of The Joinery restaurant, with a beer, chicken burger and salad. Well earnt we thought.

After lunch, we caught the Blue and Gold Ferry back to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, passing Alcatraz on the way (although we would be visiting Alcatraz later in our visit to San Francisco with teenagers). If this is some people’s commute to work, then I am extremely jealous. It was all so pretty.

If you decide to bike the bridge in San Francisco then I would strongly recommend a trip with goes over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito, as this was our favourite activity when in San Francisco with teenagers.

Find the Fortune Cookie Factory in San Francisco’s Chinatown

After an hour of downtime at the hotel, we caught an Uber to San Francisco’s Chinatown with the oldest Chinese American community in the USA, but not the biggest, which is in New York. The earliest Chinese immigrants came in 1840s to the Bay Area just before the Gold Rush.

On the way, it was hard to ignore that nothing is straight here, which all adds to the charm of this unique city. One minute you are heading up a hill, and the next you are heading down. It makes for a fun ride in the taxi.

Dragon Gate is the main entrance to San Francisco’s Chinatown, and the outer arches of the Dragon Gate (erected in 1970) were originally intended for the common people to pass through. The dragons on either side of the gate keep evil spirits out.

We walked under through the Dragon Gate and along Grant Street into San Francisco’s Chinatown. Once this area was a red-light district, but after the 1906 earthquake and devastation of the city, Chinatown was established.

Things we saw on our walk-through San Francisco’s Chinatown included:

• The Sing Chung Building – on California Street, featuring Chinese architecture but designed by a Scottish architect using a pagoda style.
• The Bank of Canton – once home to the Chinese Telephone Exchange which began operating switchboards in 1891 but was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. It was rebuilt in an ornate style and remained a switchboard until 1949 when it no longer necessary, being bought by the Bank of Canton in 1960.
• Chinese decorations – colourful lanterns strung from buildings, wonderful orange painted buildings with turquoise accents, and endless shops selling dragons and jade jewellery.
• Bubble tea refreshments with bursting baobab.
• Chinese murals – There is a large Horoscope mural and Bruce Lee mural on Jack Kerouac Alley, although you will find other murals throughout the neighbourhood as you wander around.

Our favourite stop in San Francisco’s Chinatown was at The Fortune Cookie Factory, which opened in 1962 and is the last of its kind. Inside this tiny space, a couple of ladies were sitting at desks stuffing the cookies with the fortune messages before shaping them, ready to be baked on-site. The ladies make about 20,000 cookies a day, which you can buy in packs from the shop.

Buy a book at City Lights Bookstore

Exit San Francisco’s Chinatown at Kerouac Alley, near the famous City Lights Bookstore in North Beach (in reality, nowhere near a beach!). This is the famous bookshop where Beat Generation authors, such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, used to meet for readings after the bookshop published a poem called Howl by Ginsberg. City Lights Bookstore was America’s first all paperback bookshop.

As you walk from City Lights Bookstore through North Beach towards Filmore Street, you will spot the Transamerica Pyramid building which is one of the city’s more modern landmarks. Then, go in search of a different type of tower – the Art Deco tower, Coit Tower at the top of the very steep Filmore Street. On Filmore Street all the houses are built on a slant, and you have to park at 90 degrees to your house to reduce the risk of our car rolling away down the hill. All very San Francisco!

Unfortunately, the Coit Tower was closed when we arrived on our walking tour of San Francisco with teenagers, so we continued our walking route to look for parrots on Telegraph Hill instead.

Look for green parrots on Telegraph Hill

From Coit Tower pick up the signs for Telegraph Hill and the Filmore Steps which lead all the way down Telegraph Hill back to the Embarcadero. These wooden steps are built through the back gardens of the large houses on Telegraph Hill, so the area is lush with plants and trees. A flock of green parrots lives here, but sadly we didn’t manage to spot any on the way, but it didn’t matter because we really enjoyed the garden views.

Once back at the Embarcadero you can either find your way back to your hotel, or go in search of food at the nearby Ferry Terminal building which is full of food shops and restaurants. We stopped for coffee on the Embarcadero and opened our cookies from the Fortune Cookie Factory to see what messages we had inside – “Now is the time to set your sights high and go for it!”

Today was a great introduction to San Francisco and made us excited about what we would find tomorrow. Hopefully some hippies as we are going in search of hippie vibes in San Francisco…

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