San Francisco

About San Francisco

San Francisco is a secondary US homeport for Alaska cruises, primarily used by Princess and Holland America for 10- and 11-night sailings that repositions ships to and from their summer Alaska programs. The James R. Herman Cruise Terminal at Pier 27, near Fisherman's Wharf and the Ferry Building, is a short cab or Muni ride from downtown hotels and SFO airport (about 30 minutes by taxi). Because San Francisco Bay sits at the southern edge of the Alaska cruising season, these itineraries tend to be longer and spend more days at sea on the Pacific leg than Seattle or Vancouver round-trips. Typical ports include Victoria, Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, and either Glacier Bay or Hubbard Glacier for scenic cruising.

• San Francisco ranks first among U.S. cities with a population over 300,000 by per capita income, and second by population density — a remarkably compact city of enormous wealth.
• The California Gold Rush of 1849 transformed San Francisco almost overnight from a small settlement into the largest city on the West Coast, as fortune-seekers flooded in from around the world.
• The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed roughly three-quarters of the city, yet San Francisco rebuilt so quickly that it hosted the Panama–Pacific International Exposition just nine years later in 1915.
• San Francisco's Inner Harbor was a major port of embarkation during World War II for naval personnel shipping to the Pacific Theater, cementing its role as the gateway to the Pacific.
• The city is credited as the birthplace of the beatnik movement, the 1967 Summer of Love, and the modern gay rights movement — a concentration of counterculture history unmatched by any comparably sized city.