San Francisco flights summary:
Direct flights to San Francisco are available from British Airways and Virgin, as well as the American carrier United, who have a major hub there.
San Francisco in a nutshell:
A bastion of liberal ideals in an increasingly conservative America, vibrant San Francisco is an absolute must on any trip to California.
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Note that all flights from London to San Francisco operate between Heathrow and San Francisco International airports respectively. Despite intense competition on the London route, there are currently no flights to San Francisco from any other UK airport, with connections via other European cities also being much less widely available than they are via London.
If you don't mind taking a connecting flight, it can often be cheaper to arrive in nearby Oakland airport instead, although to get the best deals, you would need to specify Oakland as the destination, not San Francisco, even though Oakland is designated as a San Francisco airport.
Oakland airport offers regular shuttle buses to the nearby Bart station (Coliseum / Oakland Airport), although the recent extension of the western end of the BART line has brought about much better connections between San Francisco International and downtown San Fran.
For the Silicon Valley area, it is also worth looking at flights to San Jose, which is also classed as a San Francisco airport.
When the Village People sang “Go West”, it was to San Francisco - rather than L.A. - that they referred. A hotbed of what the neo-conservatives like to call “liberal values” (and what the liberals like to call liberal values), this city by the coast has, over the years, proved endlessly accepting and tolerant of all those who find San Francisco’s Californian neighbour too bright, anonymous, forbiddingly square or no-less-forbiddingly hip for their tastes.
But San Francisco also serves as a bracing rebuke to L.A.’s infinite flat space, being at once more compact and accessible (though pedestrians are advised the steep inclines can take a heavy toll on the legs), and fostering of a greater sense of community. In this context, the Golden Gate Bridge is a still-breathtaking symbol of how divides greater than an expanse of water - those of race, class and sexual orientation - can and will be crossed.
Relics like the infamous Alcatraz prison, and the Presidio - stern, forbidding reminders of the authoritarianism that still exists elsewhere in America - are now mostly regarded as popular out-of-town museum pieces. More typical of the San Fran vibe is Fort Mason, a former military base since converted into a series of galleries, theatres and museums.
The city itself strikes the traveller as one permanent, year-round exhibition devoted to the left-of-centre, a celebration of marginalia that takes in many above-average, admirably funded performing arts venues, and just as many impromptu happenings set out in fly-posters down back avenues and alleyways.
It’s broad enough to encompass both high architecture (the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Folk Art International Building) and Looney Tunes (the Cartoon Art Museum), and to have given inspiration to figures as diverse as the Grateful Dead, The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola (who established his American Zoetrope studio here) and novelist Dave Eggers, who turned the international success of his novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius into 826 Valencia, a writing workshop for young children.
Shoppers tend to head for the gleaming Union Square plaza, or bustling Powell Street for bargains, and the thoroughfares come alive after dark with the first stirrings of the city’s throbbing gay and lesbian scene. But San Francisco also lends itself to even manlier activity: these are, after all, the hills up and down which man’s-man Steve McQueen propelled his car in Bullitt. Buckle up.
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