Full transcript
The City's Front Door
Before the bridges, everyone arrived in San Francisco by water, and they arrived through here. That made this the second busiest transit terminal on earth — only Charing Cross in London moved more people. The clock tower is 245 feet, with four dials 22 feet across, and you will read everywhere that it copies the Giralda in Seville. There is no evidence for that. The echo is real; the paper trail does not exist.
A Temple of California Food
The bridges took the crowds, and the trains that started running into the Transbay Terminal in 1939 took the rest. The building went quiet for sixty years, until a restoration begun in 2002 turned it into what it is today: a grand marketplace of California's best food. Inside, farmers sell stone fruit and heirloom tomatoes from the Central Valley; stands shuck oysters from Tomales Bay; and the smell of sourdough from Acme and coffee from Blue Bottle fills the air. It's the single best place in the city to taste what California grows, catches, and bakes.
Walk the Embarcadero
Outside the Ferry Building runs the Embarcadero, a wide waterfront promenade built after the 1989 earthquake damaged the old freeway that once walled the city off from its bay. Today it's 3.5 miles of palms, piers, and public art — walk north toward Pier 39, or south toward Oracle Park. The farmers market on the plaza runs three days a week and is where locals actually stock their kitchens; check which day before you plan around it. Then walk out to the end of the pier behind the building and look back — this is the doorstep a whole city used to arrive through.