Eileen Ogintz - Kids Guide to San Francisco

Award-winning author Eileen Ogintz is a leading national family travel expert whose syndicated Taking the Kids is the most widely distributed column in the country on family travel. She has also created TakingtheKids.com, which helps families make the most of their vacations together. Ogintz is the author of eight family travel books and is often quoted in major publications such as USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, as well as parenting and womens magazines on family travel. She has appeared on such television programs as The Today Show, Good Morning America, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, as well as dozens of local radio and television news programs. She has traveled around the world with her three children and others in the family, talking to traveling families wherever she goes. She is also the author of The Kids Guide to New York City, The Kids Guide to Orlando, The Kids Guide to Washington, DC, The Kids Guide to Chicago, The Kids Guide to Los Angeles, The Kids Guide to Boston, The Kids Guide to San Diego, and The Kids Guide to Denver, Boulder & Colorados Ski Country (Globe Pequot).

A few sparkles in the sand of a riverbed north of San Francisco changed this city forever.

Just 500 people lived here in 1847. But with the 1849 gold rush, San Francisco became a big city almost overnight, bursting with people from all over the world who were coming and going from the goldfields. Fortunes were made and lost.

Now you know why San Franciscos professional football team is called the 49ers!

It was a wild and crazy place. One neighborhood, the Barbary Coast, was notorious for its lawlessness. Men outnumbered women there 10 to 1.

DID YOU KNOW?

Lombard Street is the worlds most crookedwith eight hairpin curves in a one-block stretch between Hyde Street and Leavenworth.

Chinese, Japanese, Hispanic, African-American, Italian, Irish, and Filipino immigrants were among those who came here hoping to get rich. Many of their families have lived here ever since.

Ever since these gold rush days, San Francisco has been known as a place where new ideas flourish and differences between people are celebrated. Many artists, musicians, writers, and even chefs found their start here.

The hippie movement took off in the Haight neighborhood, and a lot of great rock n roll was first played in San Francisco. A strong gay community developed here, and its fight against AIDS has been especially active.

DID YOU KNOW?

There are 14,000 Painted Lady Victorian houses in San Francisco. For many people, they represent San Francisco as much as the cable cars do.

Whats Cool? The free Cable Car Museum where you can see how cable cars work (1201 Mason St.; 415-474-1887; cablecarmuseum.com).

There are great museumswhether you like art, science, or historyand great places to see theater and hear music. There are amazing parks and playgrounds including the citys biggest and most famousGolden Gate Park.

Look at the city as you go up and down the hillsthere are modern skyscrapers like the citys tallest, the Transamerica Pyramid downtown853 feet highand colorful Victorian houses called Painted Ladies.

Hike up to the top of Telegraph Hill for the views. San Francisco really looks different than other American cities. Thats why its so much fun to visit.

Hop off the cable car and check out Lombard Street, the most crooked street in the world. Does it make you dizzy?

DID YOU KNOW?

San Francisco is called the City by the Bay because it is at the very tip of a peninsula surrounded by water on three sides: the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco Bay, and the Golden Gate Strait, the narrow passage between them.

DID YOU KNOW?

The people who drive cable cars are called the gripmen. To start the car, the gripmen pull the big lever that closes the grip around the moving cable. To stop, they step on the wheel brakes. Get ready! This isnt a typical bus ride!

Its hard to believe that San Francisco was once a sleepy little town!

Look for the narrow stairways hidden in the gardens in nearby Russian Hill. (Youll find some steps on Greenwich between Hyde and Larkin.) This neighborhood of big old houses gets its name from when a small Russian cemetery was discovered at the top of the hill during the Gold Rush.

Got a cardboard box? The Seward Street Slides (Seward St. off Douglass St.) are really, really steep concrete slides. Fun!

Persistence Pays Off

On a drizzly night in 1869more than 145 years agoa young engineer watched horrified as a horse pulling a streetcar up a steep San Francisco hill stumbled in the mud and fell and the crowded car rolled all the way back down.

Andrew Hallidie thought there had to be a better way to get people up and down San Franciscos hills. Even though many people laughed, he kept working on the idea to have an underground steel cable pull those cars.

He was right! The first cable car in the world, the Clay Street Hill Railroad, officially opened September 1, 1873, and was an immediate hit. Within a few years, San Franciscos cable cars were carrying people all over the city. Soon, there were cable railways in many cities across the country.

But only San Franciscos cable cars are still running. The shiny red cars of today look much like the originals that Hallidie designed. Stop at the Cable Car Museum (1201 Mason St.; 415-474-1887; cablecarmuseum.com) in the Cable Car Barn at Washington and Mason Streets on Nob Hill. Its where the cars are kept at night and also where you can look over the balcony and see the giant wheels turning, pulling the cables under San Franciscos streets. Theyre attached by a mechanical grip below the car. Climb aboard one of the old cars and see how it would feel to drive one!