Contrary as to the you may expect from such a well known, tourist-heavy city, San Francisco quietly delivers a lot for the money. And thus much of the fun in San Francisco is free.
From free museums to public art and architectural highlights, here's a summary of the best choices for travelers on a budget.
1. The Golden Gate Bridge
It's totally free to marvel at this feat of art-deco design and engineering. On sunny days, it's a brilliant radiant orange (International Orange, to be precise), and when the fog rolls in it's a moody only-in-San Francisco vista. You can bike across, but it is just like fun – if you're dressed right – to walk across the world's most beautiful bridge. It's 1.7 miles across (it's possible to catch a bus back – though some visitors just walk halfway across, take in the scene, and return).
2. Free First Tuesdays
If you're in Bay area around the first Tuesday of the month, get thee to either the Legion of Honor or even the de Young Museum, both of which have the freedom on those times. The previous includes a collection ranging from Monet to John Cage soundscapes, ancient Iraqi ivories to R Crumb comics. The second houses items from Oceanic ceremonial masks and trippy-hippie handmade fashion to a James Turrell domed skyspace installation included in along side it of a hill.
3. Amoeba Music
Amoeba Music is a big record/CD store made from an old bowling alley on Haight Street. A music lover could spend hours there. Either troll the $1 bins for that glory of vinyl, or time it for the frequent free shows placed in the corner.
4. Pier 39
Don't pretend you're too cool to gawk in the sea lions, who canoodle, belch and scratch their backsides on the docks of Pier 39. As many as 1300 arrived at laze in the sun, because they have since 1990, providing many photo ops from January to July.
5. Café Royale
Always free, this Parisian-styled café hosts a number of events including live music and DJ sets several days a week.
6. Coit Tower murals and also the Filbert Street Steps
Coit Tower (1934) is really a beloved area of the Bay area skyline, although not liberated to go up. However, the murals that line the lobby can see. Embracing San Francisco's heritage of labor reform and glorifying the staff member, the murals are intended by 25 artists, many of whom were denounced as communists. It is a steep walk up from any side, to be tempted to put down a few dollars to achieve the top. It's worth it.
Speaking of which… the famed Filbert Street Steps up to Coit Tower are quite steep but make use of a hidden North Beach realm of cottages along a wooden boardwalk called Napier Lane, with sculpture tucked in among gardens year-round and sweeping views from the Bay Bridge. Plus wild parrots. If you're heading back down, try the neighboring Greenwich St Stairs to have an alternative route and more chances for parrot-spotting.
7. Art galleries
San Francisco overflows with wild, unexpected art shows at a large number of galleries that are free to visit. They're quieter throughout the week, but simply more enjoyable at openings or weekends.
An excellent starting place is the gallery-packed four-floor 49 Geary downtown. Other favorites include Ratio 3 in the Mission, whose artists regularly get Artforum coverage; the Diego Rivera Gallery featuring the artist's trompe l'oeil 1931 mural The Making of a Fresco Showing a Building of the City; and the Tenderloin's plucky Luggage Store Gallery.
8. Bay area Center for the Book
Remember books? The San Francisco Center for that Book not only displays elaborate Coptic binding and wooden typesetting machines accustomed to make the things, but offers a wide display of fixing exhibits and workshops. All free.
Read more: How you can spend an ideal weekend in San Francisco
9. City Hall
Inside the mighty beaux-arts dome, the splendid rotunda of San Francisco City Hall has ringing acoustics – an advisable spot to sit and consider of triumph and tragedy which has occurred here, including Harvey Milk's 1978 assassination. There are public art exhibits in the basement, and free tours in the tour kiosk.
Read more: Very first time Bay area: discover the greatest of the City through the Bay
10. Fort Point
Built in 1861 to protect the town from – understand this – Confederate attacks that never came, Fort Point is now more famous as the spot where Kim Novak lept into the frigid waters from the bay in Hitchcock's Vertigo. It's an ideal standpoint for views of the Golden Gate Bridge if you aren't as much as the walk across.
11. Clarion Alley
The Mission's spot for trial by fire is on wee Clarion Alley, where street artworks are peed on or painted in a jiff unless they deliver enough to last a short while. Nothing stays (art) gold here. Even Andrew Schoultz's mural of gentrifying elephants displacing scraggly birds – a nearby favorite – faded with time. Go see what's new.
12. Rincon Annex Post Office
Anton Refregier won the WPA's largest commission to depict a brief history of Northern California in murals in the Rincon Annex Post Office, just as WWII erupted. Work resumed in 1945, carried out in 1948, and was deemed "communist" by McCarthyists in 1953. The murals are actually a national landmark.
13. Musée Mécanique
Sinister, freckle-faced Laughing Sal has creeped out kiddies for more than a hundred years at this wonderful vintage arcade museum that's as fun to check out (free of charge) as play. If you splurge a few quarters you are able to play from start-your-own bar brawls in coin-operated Wild West saloons, peep at belly dancers or feed your inner Ms Pac-Man.
14. Golden Gate Park
When the elements cooperates, the 1017-acre park of redwood, green meadows, and museums is a perfect setting to laze half a Bay area day. Plus a lot is free of charge, including weekly concerts and events like Hardly Strictly (a yearly bluegrass festival) and Shakespeare in the Park. But better yet there are free lawn bowling lessons every Wednesday at noon. Yes, some dreams do become a reality.
Read more: The best day trips from San Francisco
15. Volunteer-guided walking tours
Local volunteer-historians lead roughly eight daily one- to two-hour walking tours by neighborhood and theme – which range from Chinatown alleys and gold rush history sites to some Japanese Tea Garden and also the Public Library. It's volunteer-based, with dozens of options, and totally free, though donations are accepted.
16. Randall Museum
Near Corona Heights Park, a 520ft summit close to the Castro with superb views within the city, the Randall Museum is a free, family-ready place with live-animal exhibits and hands-on workshops.
17. City Lights & Green Apple
SF's literary scene is legendary, perhaps nowhere more so than City Lights, founded by city poet laureate Lawrence Ferlinghetti, next to Jack Kerouac Alley. Look for readings here, or at other beloved bookstores such as the Richmond District's Green Apple.
18. Seward Street slides
Lost in the Castro – near the corner of Douglas St and Seward St, about 5 or 6 blocks southwest of Market St and Castro – this tiny park has a couple of curving concrete slides that are fun to slide down. You will find usually cardboard boxes handy to sit down on and go, but BYOB (bring your personal box) to be sure. Seriously, does any city have more fun?
19. Cable Car Museum
Putting the cable in "cable car," this museum occupies a still-functioning cable-car barn, and shows off three 1870s cable cars as well as those famed cables that pull those cute open carriages full of tourists up and over the hills.
20. Stern Grove Festival
If you're visiting in summer (late June through late August), definitely look up a city classic: the Stern Grove Festival's calendar of free concerts on Sundays that's become a local icon for three-quarters of the century. The season schedule is announced each year at the beginning of May; past artists include Neko Case, the English Beat and the San Francisco Opera.
21. Transamerica Pyramid's fake observatory
A keystone from the San Francisco skyline since 1972 – though its blast-off pyramid shape is sometimes dismissed as "Pereira's Pr*ck" (after architect William Pereira). As the Transamerica Pyramid's observation deck continues to be closed since 9/11, there's a virtual observation deck to see, a half-acre Redwood Park at its base, along with a visitor center looking at the history of your building.
22. Twin Peaks or Bernal Heights views
Perfectly situated in the geographical center of Bay area, the twin 922ft peaks offer towering views of the city and bay – generally among the must-sees of tourists with cars. Those without, and unwilling to go ahead and take steep climb up from Market Street, think about a quieter alternative, Bernal Heights, with lovely looks from south of the Mission, and no tour buses.
23. Wave Organ
The Wave Organ is a audio system of PVC tubes and concrete pipes capped with marble from a classic cemetery built directly into the end of the Marina Boat Harbor jetty. Tones shift based on waves, winds and tide – sounding alternately like spooky breathing on a phone towards the nervous humming of the dinnertime line chef.
