Lonely Planet - San Francisco

4. Find Gold Mountain's hidden gems

With 41 historic alleyways packed into 22 square blocks, Chinatown is rich in old stories and new discoveries - if you know where to look. At first you'll be dazzled by the obvious eyecatchers: phone booths with pagoda roofs lining Grant St, and apothecary shops with walls of wooden drawers along Stockton. But it's not until you walk the alleyways that you scratch the surface and discover the city-within-a-city known for 150 years in Cantonese as Gum San or 'Gold Mountain.' These are the narrow streets where San Francisco grew up too fast, surviving booms, busts, bigotry, drug addiction and trials by fire to reach a wise old age.

You'll notice that these alleyways aren't exactly paved with gold, as once advertised in Chinese labor-recruitment posters - but from the start of the Gold Rush, cooks, launderers, barbers, porters, tailors and laborers found steady work here. Many of these trades are still practiced here on Waverly Pl and Spofford Alley, where neighborhood associations, social clubs and temples share storefronts with mom-and-pop businesses.

Head to Ross Alley, and wherever you see flowerpots being watered and laundry airing in open windows, stop and listen: whistling tea kettles, radio news reports in Cantonese, kids being called to dinner for the third time. Hard to believe that this is where bootlegging and gambling operations once flourished, and unescorted women lost their reputations. In the 1870s, with the price of gold in decline, a corrupt police force, and anti-Chinese laws restricting legitimate employment, immigration and housing, Chinese San Franciscans found themselves confined to cramped quarters where vice thrived. Sailors stumbled up from the port to Commercial St brothels for 25-cent recreation, and society swells headed downhill to gamble on Ross St and smoke opium in discreet Duncombe Alley.

Then came the 1906 fire, and the city's demand that Chinatown refugees relocate to Hunter's Point. But while the altars were still smoldering ruins, worship services were held in Waverly Pl and Chinatown residents got organized. They stood their ground, rebuilt their homes, and reinvented Grant and Stockton as the distinctive Chinatown deco shopping and dining streets you see today - and in the alleyways, the dream of Gold Mountain has been kept alive.

5. See the gate to the west at its best

Leftists pretty much run SF, but fierce right-wing and left-wing debates rage over the best bridge viewpoint. On the bridge's left are Seacliff mansion owners with multimillion-dollar vested interests in believing their view is best, plus nudists on Baker Beach convinced that the only way to appreciate the bridge in all its glory is to see it in theirs. To the right are Crissy Field fitness freaks with Ironman jogging strollers who brake for beauty, and cinema buff s who believe Hitchcock got it right: seen from below at Fort Point, the bridge induces a thrilling case of Vertigo.

No matter how you look at it or obsessively photograph it, the 1937 engineering marvel never fails to make a scene. Sunny days make you wish for afternoon fog, which spills over the towers like dry ice at a Kiss concert, to the tune of foghorn blasts.

6. Frolic among Bison, Bonsai and pagan altars

Smack in the middle of this fair city and any San Franciscan's affections lies a 48-block stretch of greenery and imagination. At one end the drum circle of Hippie Hill provides an off beat soundtrack to the sweater-clad exertions of the Lawn Bowling Club; at the other, bison stampede through their paddock toward seaside windmills like shaggy Don Quixotes. Wiccan offerings are made on the marble remains of a Spanish monastery behind the baseball diamond, and curiosity-seekers follow cracks in the pavement made by sculptor Andy Goldsworthy into the MH de Young Museum.

Meanwhile, overstimulated travelers enjoy a moment of Zen in the Japanese Tea Garden.

San Francisco's most forward-thinking feature is one of its oldest, a testament to the positive influence of local environmentalists like John McClaren and John Muir as early as 1870. The park has changed a bit since the 19th century - the wacky Eskimo village is gone, and the Conservatory of Flowers has been retrofitted - but thousands of visitors still enjoy the live music, outdoor festivals and constant blooming of San Francisco's green wonder.

7. Get artistically inclined

Blame it on the rolling fog and the happening arts scene: not only is it perfectly fine to have your head in the clouds in San Francisco, it's actively encouraged. The Yerba Buena Arts District was a sensibly drab, business-minded area until the SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Cartoon Art Museum moved in. There went the neighborhood, daydreaming of Matthew Barney films, musing about Mexican street graphics and doodling political comics on company time.

While attendance at Sony's flagship consumer-tainment Metreon complex flagged, independent-minded nonprofit arts organizations flourished: the Museum of African Diaspora, established a landmark presence, and SFCamerawork and the Museum of Craft & Folk Art relocated to new digs here.

Now any foggy day finds active thinkers adrift in the upper galleries of Yerba Buena Arts District, lost in thought, and found in inspiration.