Hi, welcome to watchmojo.com. My name is Karen and today we’ll be profiling the city of San Francisco also known as the “fog city”. That’s the city that’s all about the hills where a simple walk becomes a hike and the drive becomes an amusement park ride.
San Francisco was established in the mid 1700s when Spanish sailors sailed through the Golden Gate. They displaced the Indians that have lived there thousands of years before them. And for many years, San Francisco is just a sleepy port until the 1840s when gold was discovered. Then, San Francisco took its modern shape after the1906 earthquake and the devastating fires that almost completely destroyed the city. There’s a lot to do and there's a lot to see in San Francisco.
The very famous tourist spot is Fisherman’s Wharf, which is the waterfront. That’s where you can see a lot of historical ships that you can also visit. There’s also a World War II submarine called the “USS Pampanito” that you can take a tour of. There’s the Pier 39, which is where you’ll find a lot of tourist shops and restaurants, there’s also a carousel for kids.
Once you’re in the Fisherman Wharf, you’re right in front of Alcatraz which is of course the famous prison. And why is it called Alcatraz? It’s because it comes from the Spanish word Alcatraces, which means pelicans and that’s because the island used to be inhabited by tons of pelicans and that’s how it took its name.
Another very famous thing to do in San Francisco is taking the cable cars. San Francisco houses have a very special architecture some of them call it the Painted Ladies and that’s what you really see on the postcards of San Francisco.
Another very famous spot that you shouldn’t miss in San Francisco is Chinatown, which is the ultimate Chinatown. The first Chinese immigrants arrived in San Francisco in 1848 and if you go to Chinatown you could see how the fortune cookies are made because they have fortune cookie factory there. And it’s actually in San Francisco that the fortune cookies were invented in 1914.
If you go downtown, you can go to Union Square which is where you’ll find lot of the big stores like Saks you’ll see Levis. Levis was actually invented in San Francisco.
Next is the name symbol of the city—Golden Gate Bridge. It has observation points at each end and the bridge connects San Francisco to Marin County. There’s a lot of parks—beautiful parks in San Francisco. But one that I definitely recommend is the Golden Gate Park. It’s huge, it’s bigger than Central Park and it has thousands of different types of plants and flowers coming from all around the world.
San Francisco of course has a lot of interesting museums but if there's one that you can’t miss is the San Francisco Legion of Honor Museum, which poses art collections from 2000 years at least until the 20th century.
There’s a couple of interesting events happening in San Francisco. If you’re visiting in February it’s the Chinese New Year and in Chinatown they celebrate it for an entire week with a bunch of festivities and it ends in downtown with a parade called the Golden Dragon’s Parade. And in May there is the carnival in the mission district which is sort of like a Mardi Gras and they also have parades and it finishes with a ball.
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