SF MUNI, San Francisco

When I first moved to San Francisco, I heard nonstop complaints about the muni bus system. That has changed. One thing our former Mayor Willie Brown did was hire a crackerjack director who bought new buses, donated the old ones to the Salt Lake City Olympics and whipped the system into shape.

I use the Muni to go all over San Francisco. The fare is $1.25 per trip (or you can buy a day pass for buses and cable cars). For your $1.25, you get a transfer that will allow you to get back on any bus, officially for 90 minutes, but the bus drivers are VERY lax about this. Transfers are good on the trolleys and F line, but not the cable car.

The F line is a recent wonderful addition to San Francisco. In 2000, San Francisco, after decades of effort, completely refurbished and put into operation several antique streetcars and trolleys from all around the world. The F line runs from Castro, down Market, along the Embarcadero (waterfront) and all the way to Fisherman's wharf.

The F line is operated by Muni, so your Muni pass and transfers will work on this line. The line is fun to ride and very scenic.

SF bought some old trams from cities that no longer used them - they are great fun to look out for - I especially liked the orange Milan trams - their light fittings were stylish and the adverts were all in Italian!

The buses in San Francisco are the best & cheapest way to get around, especially if you have children. You cannot walk up & down all those hills. An excellent way to see the sights in different areas. You can buy a ticket & transfer from one route to another.

If you have an interest and more time than you know what to do with...The 'F' streetcar lines uses interesting, refurbished contraptions from around the world; from a turn-of-the-century trolley from Kansas City to a vintage streetcar from Italy with loads of old-world charm. It runs from Market and Castro Streets out to the Ferry Building and continues to Fisherman's Wharf. And then retraces its route.

The Ferry Building's tower - a copy of the 12th century Giralda Tower in Seville, Spain - was obviously meant to be framed perfectly by the buildings of what was once the city's main shopping street. But it's turned just slightly, a few degrees off square. The urban legend was always that Willis Polk, who finished the building after A. Page Brown's death, turned the building so he could see the clock tower from his home on Russian Hill. But it was actually Page who turned it, and he did it so it would line up with the shoreline, not with Market Street. Try the food stalls of the reopened Ferry Building.

The MUNI is the organisation that runs the subway, the buses, the streetcars and cable cars in San Francisco: a MUNI pass is good on all of these forms of transportation.

You can buy a one-day, a three-day or a weeklong pass that will give you unlimited travel on all public transport except the BART, which operates a different ticketing system. It's fabulous to be able to hop on and off at will, and the maps of the transportation system are generally very easy to understand: we figured out how to navigate the city pretty quickly, and saved quite a bit of shoe leather.

The big thrill for many people is still the cable car, since it's such a San Francisco thing to so. If you want to ride without a crowd, ride north towards Fisherman's Wharf in the evening: during the day, it's hard to get on going north, and it's as bad going south in the evening. It's a lot of fun, though the operators look and sound as though they've had quite enough of tourists doing goofy things for laughs...

The San Francisco Municipal Railway (MUNI) is the city's mass transportation system, operating the above and underground metro, cable cars, and bus services. San Francisco is thankfully one of the few cities in the United States that you don't really need to drive in order to get around, as it can be a total nightmare (please, take it from me). Fares are usually cheap, and the system is very safe to ride in.

If you're driving up to San Francisco but don't feel like driving around it, here's some advice: park your car near San Francisco State University, in one of the residential neighborhoods. There's two MUNI metro stops nearby. Hop aboard and it'll take you directly into downtown in less than 15 minutes.

Bus transportation is very good in SF. For a dollar you get a ticket which is good for a certain time of the day, which is indicated on the ticket itself.

This ticket is can be used twice in any direction, but the drivers hardly ever check this so....

(I'm not going to put idea into your head's)