We had 3 full days in San Francisco, which was enough time to see all the main sights and get a feeling of the city.

As San Francisco is a quite expensive city, and we are traveling on budget, we stayed at the cheapest place in downtown; the Winsor Hotel. It was a fine budget hotel; clean rooms and fast wifi, but the neighborhood was a bit rough; it seemed like a gathering place for homeless people and hookers. We have read about them on tripadvisor beforehand, so it did not come as a surprise to us, and they were not aggressive either, so it was not a problem. Our hotel was the one where the light shines on the top window.

Not far from our accommodation was downtown San Francisco with its skyscrapers.

My favorite place in the city was Pier 39 with the sea lions, despite that it was quite crowded.

The cable car system (actually 3 lines) is an icon of San Francisco, and therefore tourists stands in long lines to ride them (7$ one way!). To us it did not seem like such a big deal, so we skipped this "must-do" and took only some cool pictures of the famous cable cars.

San Francisco is also known for its steep and crooked streets. As we prefer walking around instead of taking public transport or tourist bus, for us it meant a lot of walking uphill. There were times, when it was hard, but it was all worth it for the amazing hilltop views.

Lombard street is claimed as "the most crooked street in the world".

There are also some good views of the bay area.

The Golden Gate Bridge lies pretty far from the city center, therefore, most tourists choose to visit it by bike. The bridge seems to be covered in fog most of the time, so this is the best shot we managed to take.

 Alcatraz is just 2 km offshore from San Francisco, and can be seen from the bay.

We have also walked around in Haight Ashbury and Richmond districts, which were quite hip and cozy. 

Golden Gate Park was quite a disappointment; first of all it lies pretty far from everything else (also from Golden Gate Bridge!) and it is not a nice relaxing park, as one would imagine, rather a huge green area criss-crossed by busy roads. These were the three best pictures we could take in the park.

San Francisco was a great place to start our trip, the city has a lot to offer, however, there were a couple of things I disliked or was surprised about:

- there were a lot of homeless people everywhere, also at the most touristy places

- few public places (e.g. parks, squares) for people to get together and socialize

- the city is much bigger that it seems on the free tourist map, and all the attractions are spread out

- there were coffee shops on every corner, but it was extremely difficult to find trendy places with healthy food such as salad bars and juice shops