There are lots of ways to sightsee in this exciting and picturesque City by the Bay. This is the town that Tony Bennett left his heart in, where Carol Doda made the striptease a household word, and where the pro football 49ers won five world championships. This is the city that survived the 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire, that came out of the depression with arms open wide, and whose mayor George Moscone was gunned down by a crazy councilman over thirty years ago.
You can find budget tours of San Francisco if you look online. One of the best ways to see the city is to take one of the replica cable cars that are really buses with a cable car body. These cable cars have drivers who will guide you throughout the city and let you know all of the relevant facts and historical tidbits about different landmarks. You can find these tours at www.sanfranciscotours.us or at www.cablecarcharters.com.
Some of these companies that offer guided tours of San Francisco also do them from double decker buses like the ones you see in London. You can find some of these at www.sightseeingworld.com or at www.buysanfranciscotours.com.
One of the best ways to take a tour of San Francisco is to rent a GoCar for a couple of hours. GoCars are little yellow two seater go-cart sized vehicles with open tops. The cars have audio tracks that play as you drive and actually guide you with a human voice. You can see these beauties at www.gocartours.com/sanfrancisco.html. One of the best routes that they go on is over the hills that overlook the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay alongside the Presidio. This is a fantastically beautiful area that is wooded and naturally perfect. On a clear day you can see very far away over the rest of the city and into Marin County from any of several viewing areas there.
No tour of San Francisco would be complete without a stop at Fishermans Wharf. You can start out at Union Square in downtown and hop onto a real cable car that will take you over Nob Hill and drop you off at Ghirardelli Square, just a few short blocks from Fishermans Wharf and the Cannery. Here you can sample fresh fish and steamed crab from the many sidewalk vendors that sell them right there. You can also eat at world famous Aliotos on the wharf and have one of the best seafood dinners all while enjoying a grand view of the entire Fishermans Wharf.
Make sure to stop at Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid in fun North Beach. North Beach also has some of the best restaurants in the city including Osteria del Forno which features food exclusively cooked in their old-fashioned oven. Try the pizza at North Beach pizza and you will soon forget about any other pizza pie in the world. This is really the best.
If you want to get wet, one of the best tours of San Francisco is to take the Red and White Fleet and cruise around the bay for an hour. You get up close and personal to former Federal Penitentiary Alcatraz Island, home to some of the most notorious criminals in history, including Al Capone.