3 days in San Francisco

San Francisco Ferry Building

A market hall the length of a city block, with a wide flat floor, a bakery, a creamery, a cheese counter and a coffee bar, and a plaza on the water behind it where a child can run while the coffee is drunk. On Saturday mornings the farmers market fills the front and the back and it is the best breakfast in the city; on any other morning it is still the easiest one. Eat here rather than on the Wharf, where the same money buys less.

The Sausalito ferry leaves from the dock behind. With a 9-year-old and a clear day it is the best half hour on the water the city offers, and it comes back.

Exploratorium

Fifteen minutes north along the Embarcadero, on Pier 15, and the reason to bring a curious child to San Francisco. It is a hands-on science museum in a very large shed: several hundred exhibits meant to be pulled, spun, shouted into and lain on, with a pier out the back onto the open bay. With a school-age child give it the whole late morning and eat lunch inside; with a toddler pick one gallery, stay near the wind and water exhibits by the back doors, and leave while it is still going well. The Tinkering Studio, where things get built out of parts, is where the big kids disappear.

The pier side is on the open bay and the fog comes straight down it. This is the stop the jacket was for.

Pier 39

Take the F streetcar up the Embarcadero, or walk it in 20 minutes, to the pier that was built for exactly this. The sea lions haul out on the floating docks at the west end and can be heard before they are seen; the lookout over them is the one thing on the pier every child will remember, and it costs nothing to stand there. Behind them is a two-storey carousel, and at the entrance the Aquarium of the Bay, a walk through a tunnel under the water with sharks and rays passing over your head, which takes an hour. The playground on the pier is small and fenced, which is what matters at 3.

The shops are shops. The sea lions, the carousel and the aquarium are the pier.

Also here: Aquarium of the Bay, Pier 39 Playground

Musée Mécanique

Ten minutes further along the front, on Pier 45, a warehouse of antique arcade machines that still work: fortune tellers, mechanical dioramas, a laughing sailor the size of a wardrobe and the old strength testers. The machines take coins, and it holds a child of any age for exactly as long as the change lasts. A rainy-day place that is just as good in the sun.

Bring change. A handful of quarters is an hour.

Aquatic Park

Ten minutes on along the front, past the fishing boats and the old ships tied up at the Hyde Street Pier, the Wharf ends at a small crescent of sand on a cove sheltered from the bay: the one beach in the city where a small child can paddle without surf, with swimmers in caps crossing the cove behind them whatever the month. The white building on the sand that looks like a ship is the Maritime Museum, with murals inside and a deck on the roof, and the ships at the pier are walked onto. This is the last of the afternoon, with the sundae and the cable car both at the top of the steps.

Ghirardelli Square is up the steps at the back of the beach. The sundae there is for after dinner.

Also here: National Maritime Museum, Ghirardelli Ice Cream & Chocolate Shop, Ghirardelli Chocolate Experience

Palette Tea House

Up the steps in Ghirardelli Square, a dim sum house with a bright room and a long menu of small plates, which is the right shape of dinner for a family: dumplings, buns, noodles and greens arrive as they are ready, a child eats what a child eats, and nobody waits for a main course. Eat early. The square outside is the run-around between plates, and the sundae from the chocolate shop across it is dessert.

Original Joe’s, up the hill on Washington Square in North Beach, is the swap for a family that wants a red booth and a plate of spaghetti. Book it.

California Academy of Sciences

An aquarium, a rainforest, a planetarium and a natural history museum under one living roof, in the middle of the park. Be there when the doors open and go straight to the rainforest, a four-storey glass dome walked from the floor up through butterflies and birds to a lift that drops you into the aquarium beneath it; the queue for the dome builds by mid-morning. Then the penguins, the swamp with its alligator, and the roof, which is a hill of wildflowers you can stand on. Wide floors, lifts everywhere, and a whole morning for any age.

The Music Concourse outside, between the Academy and the de Young, is a flat oval of gravel and plane trees with fountains in the middle: the run-around between galleries.

Also here: Japanese Tea Garden

Tartine 9th Avenue

Out of the park at 9th Avenue, 10 minutes on foot from the Academy’s door, and the Inner Sunset’s own high street starts: a bakery with a big plain room, bread and morning buns on the counter, and sandwiches, soup and a quiche at lunch that a child can be handed half of. It is loud enough that nobody minds a loud child. Take something from the counter for the walk back into the park.

Fiorella Sunset, two doors up, is the swap for a sit-down pizza and pasta.

Also here: Fiorella Sunset

Koret Children’s Quarter

Back into the park along its south edge, 15 minutes east, to the oldest public playground in the country, rebuilt for this century: long concrete slides that children ride on flattened cardboard, a rope climbing web, a sand area for the small ones, and beside it a carousel from 1914 with a menagerie of painted animals. The lawns around it are the picnic and the nap.

Bring a flattened box for the slides, or borrow one from whoever is leaving.

Conservatory of Flowers

The white Victorian glasshouse at the east end of the park, 10 minutes north of the playground through the trees: a wedding cake of a building full of orchids, giant lily pads and a room of carnivorous plants, which is the room. It is small, warm and damp, which is exactly right for 45 minutes at the end of an afternoon when the fog has come in. The lawn in front is where the picture gets taken.

The 5 bus stops on Fulton Street at the top of the lawn, and it is the bus to dinner.

Park Chalet

The 5 runs the length of the park along Fulton Street to the beach end, and Park Chalet is the restaurant there: a glass-walled room that opens onto its own lawn, so the children eat and then run while the grown-ups finish. Across the road is Ocean Beach, 3 miles of sand and a sunset if the fog allows. The surf there is for looking at, not for paddling.

The playground by the Beach Chalet fields, a few minutes’ walk along the park edge, is the last go of the day.

Also here: Beach Chalet Athletic Fields Playground

Presidio Tunnel Tops

A park built on top of the road tunnels, with the bridge filling one end of the view and the whole bay the other. The Outpost, at the bottom of the slope, is a playground made of fallen trees, boulders and rope, the kind children build a morning around, with a nature room beside it for the wet-weather version; the lawns above are for the picnic. Start here because it is the best view of the trip and the light is better in the morning.

The Presidio’s own shuttle bus loops the park from the transit centre at the top. It is how to reach everything else today without a car.

Il Parco

At the top of the slope, in the old transit building beside the shuttle stop, an Italian café: pizza, pasta and a patio, with the park at the door for the child who is done before the grown-ups are. The easiest table of the trip, because nobody leaves the park for it.

On a clear day the lawns above the Outpost are the picnic instead, with the bridge in front of them.

Crissy Field

Down the steps from Tunnel Tops to the water and along the promenade that runs the length of Crissy Field, a flat gravel path between a restored marsh and a beach, with the bridge getting bigger the whole way. It is a mile and a half to Fort Point, the brick fort directly under the south tower, and a stroller rolls all of it; turn back whenever the wind says so. The sand at the east end is where families wade.

The Warming Hut, at the far end by the fort, is coffee and hot chocolate in a shed with a view.

Also here: Fort Point

House of Air

An aircraft hangar at Crissy Field floored with trampolines wall to wall, plus a foam pit and a dodgeball court. It is the afternoon a 9-year-old will describe first when asked about the trip, and it burns off the day. Sessions run to a timetable, so it is worth booking the slot at breakfast.

With a younger child or a wet afternoon, the Walt Disney Family Museum on the Main Post is the swap: the story of the man, told through the drawings, with the early cartoons running on a loop.

Also here: The Walt Disney Family Museum

Presidio Bowl

Back up on the Main Post, a bowling alley in an old army building with a diner counter that does milkshakes. A game before dinner, bumpers up for the small ones, and it is warm and dry, which by late afternoon may matter.

Ask for the bumpers when you take the lane. They go up for the whole lane.

Dalida

Two minutes across the parade ground, a calm dining room in a former army building with a wide terrace, and eastern Mediterranean plates built for sharing: flatbreads, dips, things from the grill, rice. It suits a child who can sit for a while; the lawn in front is for the one who cannot. The trip ends here, with the bay at the bottom of the hill.

Book, and ask for the terrace. It is the side to be on.