San Francisco (area pop. 2.7 million) is one of the few North American cities to achieve the legendary status of such places as Paris or London. It is a city defined by collisions: of Mexican, Asian, and American cultures, of the cold north Pacific Ocean with the sunny California mainland, of 18th century Spanish missions with 21st century financial skyscrapers. Whether you're in sight of landmarks like Alcatraz or the Golden Gate Bridge makes no difference: San Francisco's tangible character is enough to tell you where you are.
This is a city steeped in the unique. The signature fog and fast-moving cloud banks, the rolling urban hills and side-mounted traffic lights, the enclaves of diverse communities encompassing engineers, hippies, and everyone in between; the cable cars, the brightly painted Victorian homes: there's nowhere in the world quite like San Francisco. Mentioning neighborhoods such as Chinatown, Haight-Ashbury, the Castro, and the Mission District evokes images of millions of voices that have shaped not only the city, but the nation.
San Francisco and the surrounding area have expanded tremendously over the past century, creating an urban metropolis known as the Bay Area. Centered around the 50-mile long San Francisco Bay, the area is connected by an extensive public transportation network and a series of impressive bridges. San Francisco itself is located on a peninsula; the San Jose area is at the south end of the bay and the Oakland area is on the mainland side.
San Francisco is located on the west coast of central California, about 90 miles southwest of Sacramento.
