San Francisco

Prior to European settlement in the area, the peninsula that now contains San Francisco was home to the Yelamu tribe, who were part of the larger Ohlone language group which stretched south from the Bay Area to the Big Sur of California. Due to San Francisco's characteristic foggy weather, the earliest European explorers in the 1600s completely bypassed what would later be called the Golden Gate and the San Francisco Bay.

In 1769, the bay was discovered by overland explorers who realized there was a strait blocking their path up the coast. The first European settlement in the area was founded by the Spanish in 1776 as a mission community surrounding the Mission San Francisco de Asís, in what is today called the Mission Dolores in the Mission District.

thumb|400px|San Francisco International Airport at night * | url=https://FlySFO.com | email= | address= | lat=37.6164 | long=-122.3862 | directions= | phone=+1-800-435-9736 | tollfree= | hours= | price= | wikidata=Q8688 | lastedit=2019-09-02 | content=Located about 10 mi (16 km) south of the city, is the Bay Area's major international airport (and one of the busiest in the nation) and has numerous passenger amenities including a wide range of food and drink establishments, shopping, baggage storage, public showers, a medical clinic, and assistance for lost or stranded travelers and military personnel. SFO has four terminals; as a rule of thumb, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines use Terminal 2, United Airlines has Terminal 3, most other domestic carriers use Terminal 1, and all foreign airlines use the International Terminal.

SFO is infamous for its weather delays, so check if Oakland Airport has service from your origin as well. Oakland is closer to Downtown San Francisco than SFO is and fog free.

thumb|right|No left turns (or U-turns) allowed on 19th Avenue Cross streets. San Francisco streets are numbered (100 per block) from the beginning of the street, and even and odd numbers are always on opposite sides.

In the absence of GPS navigation, it is best when getting an address to also ask for a cross street or neighborhood name. Most of the time, if a street touches Market Street (San Francisco's main street), that's the zero block.

A look at Stanley Robert's People Behaving Badly series will give you an inside look of usually petty crime in the city. However, it is very unlikely you'll encounter any violent or petty crime as long as you use your common sense and are vigilant.

The areas that one should be most cautious are in the neighborhoods of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, Sunnydale and Ingleside in Southeast San Francisco, as well as the Tenderloin, parts of Western Addition (including the Fillmore District), and parts of the Mission. San Francisco has relatively little violent crime, with most of these murders occur in the southeast neighborhoods of the city.