I recommend the ferry to Sausalito, the SF Ferry building, especially the days they have the farmers market, and I love to get an Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista. You are staying close to UC Berkeley. There are some great views of the bay from various places on campus.
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My parents-in-law either met or had their first date at the Buena Vista (I forget which) many years ago!
So many options for 3 days in SF. I would definitely spend one doing some combination of ferry or drive over Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito/muir woods/ driving further that direction for views /hiking.
You could easily spend the other 2 days just walking around SF and still never seeing everything. But also depends on things like whether you want to see “all the usual sights”, or do some more slightly off the beaten track fun things like go find all the murals in the Mission District San Francisco's Mission District Murals: Explorer's Guide & Map (definitely stop in at the actual mission if you are in the area - it’s small but worth a visit), or go find staircases. The 11 most stunning staircases in San Francisco - Curbed SF
I’d also give a thumbs up to Alcatraz if you haven’t been
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Alcatraz is on our list, as is Fisherman’s Wharf and riding a cable car. Those are all things we didn’t get to do before when we were there (did GG). We don’t expect to rent a car, so walking around or via ferry/cable car will be a must - beyond the bus or maybe Uber we’ll be taking to get there from Emeryville.
Thanks for the links! Some of both look quite interesting. I sense a bit of walking, but after having been on the train for a few days, walking is great. Besides, had we gone elsewhere we’d have been hiking - not much difference IMO.
I’ve discovered this link to contemplate things. If anyone has any advice about it pro/con, feel free to share:
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We went to Alcatraz for our 20th anniversary. I tried to leave H there, but the guy made it back onto the boat just in time. Drats. Guess I’m stuck with him now. Except for the taxi from the airport to our hotel and renting a car to leave/head to Oregon, we relied on public transportation/walking. It was easily doable. In addition to what you mentioned, we also went up Coit tower, “ran” up Lombard Street, saw the Palace of the arts, and took the cable car to Chinatown. We also took the regular buses to some park at the Pacific coast so my kids could say they had been in both oceans. (We just dipped our feet in.)
We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express at Fisherman’s Wharf. I thought prices were really reasonable for the location.
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The cable cars are not running at the moment - not sure when they’ll start up again, hopefully before you get here. Tip if the tourists are back: catch one near the “end” of the car line where you can just hop on rather than waiting in a line for hours at Powell St!
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Not familiar with that site. We have done an evening ghost tour walk, which was good fun. In proper SF vein, our guide was a drag queen. They also don’t appear to be operating at present but here is the link anyway for checking when you’re in town… The Real Ghost Hunting Tour of San Francisco | The Haunt SF
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We’re not really into ghost tours. I know around where we live (also a tourist area), I’ve overheard kids from my school talk about pretending to be ghosts for the tourists. I wonder how many pictures they’ve made it into? 
I am hoping the vaccines work and life is far more normal by August. Time will tell. If not, we’ll distance, mask, and enjoy seeing what we can see.
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Ha no, it’s not anyone pretending to be ghosts, it’s the supposedly haunted hotels etc of the city and who died there and how, but it was kind of a fun history tour too.
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We took the Amtrak Noreaster a few years ago for a short visit to Freeport Maine for a pre-Christmas shopping trip (LL Bean, cozy country inn, what’s not to like?). We enjoyed it overall, but we’ve gone back by car instead (3 hr drive). Problem is this (problem for the entire eastern seaboard, actually).
When Boston did the Big Dig years back, while the ENTIRE (emphasis, not yelling lol) city was dug up, the 2 major train stations, North and South Station, were not connected by train tracks.
You can go anywhere south by train from South Station, go anywhere north from North Station, but we live live south of Boston. So we took commuter rail to Boston’s Back Bay (before South Station), switch to a subway, and ride to North Station, to board Amtrak.
In a perfect world, we should have driven 10 minutes to commuter rail, ridden to South Station, and board Amtrak to Maine. So imagine a train trip from Washington DC to Portland Maine. Amtrak from DC to Boston. Get off in downtown Boston, take a subway to North Station, and resume Amtrak journey to Portland Maine.
Insanity.
Our heads exploded in 2019 when we rode Swiss Rail from Basel to Lucerne (after a river cruise), then Lucerne to Zurich airport. Easy, convenient, efficient, unbelievable.
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Someone mentioned it in passing, but a “must do” is walking on the famous part of Lombard street. May also be fun to do a hill that’s so steep it’s got stairs. (I remember there being some, but can’t provide examples).
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You’re probably thinking of the Filbert Steps and Greenwich Steps on the east side of Telegraph Hill.
The cable cars are officially supposed to start running again sometime this fall, The mayor said she’d try to move the schedule up, but I wouldn’t bet the house on it.
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Unless you want to ride a bus, I’d take BART from Emeryville to the city. (I think the MacArthur station is the closest, but it has been a while.) Arizmendi is a lovely bakery in Emeryville and has my favorite scones–I usually get the seasonal ones which change daily, but all of their baked goods are great, so see what tempts you.) The daily pizzas are good, too.
I echo heading to Muir woods; the Redwoods are gorgeous and you can hike from there for many miles, depending on what routes you take. We used to take visitors on a loop from around there that ended at Stinson Beach. If that’s of interest, PM me and I’ll see if I can figure out which trails it included.
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My family took a road trip about a decade ago and visited Stinson Beach on our way North up to the redwoods. I think I remember that there was sea glass on the beach. Aren’t there other beaches in that area known for beautiful sea glass? I love beach combing- for seashells on Sanibel Island, sharks teeth at Myrtle Beach - so that day gathering sea glass was a wonderful day for me. Maybe @creekland might be interested in a sea glass collecting adventure?
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There very well might be sea glass, but I honestly don’t remember. Great idea.
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Thanks for suggesting BART. I was only planning on taking the bus because that’s how Amtrak would have gotten us to SF had we gone all the way there with them. We will definitely visit the bakery! Trying local places is part of what we do when we travel. We actually have a rule while traveling that we can’t eat anywhere that we could eat at from home (eliminating a lot of chain places). It’s been a very tasty rule.
We might go see the redwoods again, but that was the focus of our last two trips to CA (multiple national and state parks), so this time we might just stick with the city and bay. Time will tell when we’re there.
We haven’t been to Stinson Beach, but we went to Glass Beach in Ft Bragg on one of our previous trips. It was very interesting to see - definitely different! (“Different” is what we enjoy seeing in our wanderings. 
)
If the cable cars aren’t running (which would be disappointing), there is a cable car museum. It’s free and it appears to be open. It was pretty cool if you like that kind of thing. http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/
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If they aren’t running it means SF will have to be revisited again at some point.
We’re flexible anyway and even moreso with Covid. On this trip we know we could just end up riding the rails in our own roomette enjoying the scenery and then having our own hotel room with a view if Covid goes out of control (vaxes don’t work). We’re ok with that, but we’re also hedging that the vaxes do work and we’ll be able to do more safely by the time August rolls around. Anywhere in between those two endpoints is fine too.
And if the worst happens meaning things have to get cancelled, well, that’s not much different than the trips we had planned in 2020 and early 2021. Germany/Poland and Grenada/USVI/BVI remain to be seen too. Someday.
I still prefer to be optimistic. Time will tell. We’ve done our part and gotten vaxed.
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The train adventure sounds fun. Looking forward to the Trip Report
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