How to Spend 5 Days in San Francisco with Kids

When I was a kid, I moved a lot. The longest that we stayed in one place was 3.5 years in Connecticut. My mom absolutely loved New York City — just an easy train ride away from our home–and so we went there, over and over. We stayed in fancy hotels and ate at fancy restaurants like the Russian Tea Room and Tavern on the Green, not because we were rich but because when you visit Manhattan, that’s part of the iconic experience.

It seems that our kids are having a similar experience of visiting San Francisco, a second home of sorts, one that we all love and feel endlessly in awe of. If you’d like to visit, too, here’s how to spend 5 days in San Francisco with kids:

Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, we enjoyed a 5-day San Francisco visit. We stayed in this beautiful apartment (click here for $40 off your first Airbnb stay!). It’s located on a quiet street in a residential neighborhood of San Francisco, near shopping and parks and even a eucalyptus forest, with a distant view of the beach.

Of course, if this is your first visit to San Francisco, check out my “30 things to do in San Francisco.” You’ll want to budget time for the main attractions including Chinatown (get off the main drag), Union Square (especially in the holiday season), Coit Tower, and, if you can swing it, a visit to Alcatraz. Pier 39/Fisherman’s Wharf are too touristy for me, but if you want to visit them, check out my tips for visiting Pier 39.

On our first full day, we headed to our favorite place in San Francisco, Golden Gate Park. But this wasn’t just any day. It was Sunday, when the park is completely closed to traffic. Locals come out by the droves to enjoy this beautiful green space, especially, as luck would have it, on this sunny winter day. We started with a visit to the Conservatory of Flowers:

After admiring the array of tropical plants inside and the Victorian architecture outside, we hung out in the flower garden area in front of the conservatory, walked our dogs, and then headed for the coolest playground I’ve ever visited, the Koret Children’s Quarter.

A view toward the Koret Children’s Quarter playground…This is what I think of when I think of San Francisco (going all the way back to my memories from my early teens): young people or older hippies hanging out on the hills doing all kinds of quirky stuff, minding their own business just like everyone else. San Francisco truly is a city for everyone.

And after morning started to ease into afternoon, we stopped to watch the rollerbladers who dance to music on Sundays and walked paths with trees (like this below) but no people. It’s amazing to me that in San Francisco on a Sunday, when the park welcomes people by allowing no cars, there are still spaces like this that we could have all to ourselves.

We went to Ocean Beach, the long stretch of beach along the western edge of the city. It was pretty but also dirty in places, and the sand was a far cry from the fluffy white sand that we had enjoyed at Carmel Beach just a week before.

And of course, since this is Northern California, the beach can be cold and windy. My kids didn’t care, though, and quickly grabbed sticks and started playing in the sand.

The coolest thing about this long stretch of beach is the walks through the dunes.

I finally made a return visit to the Legion of Honor Museum. 

We talked about bronzes (because there’s a nice collection of Rodin sculptures there), the importance of painters like Rembrandt and Franz Hals, and how Impressionism was a break from traditional painting, but like a typical 7-year-old, he found that even fine art boring after a while.

The Legion of Honor Museum is a must-visit because of its location. On the northwestern tip of San Francisco, Land’s End is a hilly green space with plenty of walking trails and views of the ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge. We were lucky to be there at twilight.

Another cold and windy day at sunset, we fought the crowd at the Land’s End parking lot and explored Sutro Baths, the old ruins of what was once the nation’s largest public bath house, built in the late 1800s.

It sits right on the water on the western point of San Francisco, so it’s a perfect place to watch the sun going down over the ocean, that is as long as you don’t mind the somewhat unnerving crash of the strong surf next to you.

And, to the delight of my kids, there is even a big tunnel with waves crashing beneath, leading to a view of the headlands:

One of the reasons I love San Francisco so much is that despite its tiny size and high population density, there are so many wonderful green spaces to be enjoyed. Near our apartment rental was Stern Grove, a eucalyptus forest of walking paths that descend way, way down to a full size amphitheater made of grass and stone.

After hearing too many times to count that we had missed the city’s best kids’ attraction, we finally went to the Exploratorium. I’m not sure what to say about this museum that seems to top every family’s to-do list. It was crowded, really crowded, and I hate that.

The kids were able to enjoy most of the things they wanted to try, but it always involved waiting and negotiating turns. Plus, the (amazing!) educational purposes of the exhibits were lost on my younger son, so I’d be more interested in returning if it were just my older son (who’s 7). 

That last full day was a strange one because a storm had come in, bringing very strong, cold winds for the entire day. We chose to spend a good chunk of that day indoors at the Exploratorium but later holed ourselves up with a movie and treats from a French patisserie. Before the sun went down, we enjoyed a view of the sun setting over the ocean from the hill of a reservoir just down the street.

On our last day, we visited yet another museum that I had on my list — the de Young Museum. I’d been there a couple of times before for the tower view and sculpture garden but hadn’t visited the permanent collection.

In my opinion, the museum’s architecture is as much as reason to visit as the art housed inside.

A day after returning to Sacramento, I went to a New Year’s Eve party where a few people asked me what I’d been doing during my vacation. When I told them that we had just returned from 5 days in San Francisco, some of them seemed surprised. San Francisco is the place where people usually go for a quick day-trip or an overnight, to see a concert or escape for a girlfriends’ weekend of shopping.

But to park ourselves there is our whole family’s idea of fun. We love becoming locals for a few days and discovering the City’s endless surprises.

Have you been to San Francisco? What would you do there with kids?

P.S. I’ve got much more about San Francisco, if you’d like:

30 Things to Do in San Francisco (with or without Kids)

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