Not to miss

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Filling one of the city's grooviest looking buildings, SFMOMA's collection is almost equal to the setting and getting stronger by the acquisition. Twentieth-century art is the clear forte and recent aquisitions include Mark Rothko's No 14, 1960 and Jim Hodges' No Betweens.

The permanent collection includes work by all the great American and European artists but is particularly strong in American abstract expressionism, with major works by Clyfford Still, Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston, and in fauvism, with works such as Henri Matisse's 1905 masterpiece Femme au Chapeau. The permanent collection also contains several works by Mexican painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and by Bay Area artists Robert Arneson and Richard Diebenkorn. Willem de Kooning, Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol are all represented.

Chinatown

Chinatown is densely packed and colourful. There are some tacky curio shops, but the 30,000 Chinese - most of whom speak Cantonese - live in a tightly knit, distinctly un-Western community. It's a great place for casual wandering through narrow alleys, where on quiet afternoons you can hear the clack of mahjong tiles from behind screen doors.

The most colourful time to visit Chinatown is during the Chinese New Year in late January or early February, with a parade and fireworks and other festivities.

Cable Cars

Cable cars make the everyday getting around the city fun. From the standing room along the sides the world slides by at 9mph as your wooden car climbs up and down the hills above the heart of town. There's fresh air, water views, the sounds of cables and bells, and the smell of burning pine (they use wooden blocks for brakes).