San Francisco Hop-On Hop-Off Buses

You've just arrived in San Francisco. You have an idea of everything you want to see but you don't know where to start: it's time to hop on a tour bus and get to know the city before touring it in depth.

The San Francisco Sightseeing Bus tours the entire city, passing close to its most iconic landmarks. On a complete tour of its neighbourhoods, you can hop off at up to 24 stops along Pier 39, the Palace of Fine Arts and Union Square, among other places, and tour the city at your own pace. The ticket starts at £50.

In addition, this tour includes a guided walking tour of Chinatown with a professional local guide. You can also choose the premium or deluxe option to add a night tour or a tour of Sausalito to the experience. The route of the San Francisco Hop On Hop Off bus tour depends on the route. Here are the main points of interest you will see on each itinerary:

Red route - day tour

Night Tour

The daytime bus tour of San Francisco lasts 2 hours if you take the full tour, and the nighttime tour lasts 1 hour. But in reality, the tour can last as long as you like, as you are free to hop on and off the bus and explore San Francisco and its different areas at your leisure.

That said, my advice is to take advantage of this bus tour to do the full tour and explore a little over the places you get off. The reason for this is that you will get a general idea of San Francisco and then you can go back to the sites you liked the most to visit them in depth.

During the tour, you will have an audio guide in Spanish that will tell you the highlights of the sites you visit. Again, this helps to make the bus tour a good way to get a feel for San Francisco and then explore it in more depth on your own.

The bus ticket is valid for 24 hours if you redeem it after 3pm, so you can potentially use it for longer or if you prefer not to get up early.

When you book your bus tour you will receive an email confirmation and, unless you are told otherwise, simply show that confirmation when you get on the bus. That said, your ticket will be valid for one day (but not 24 hours - at midnight it will cease to be valid like Cinderella's carriage). If you get on the bus after 15:00 in the afternoon, your ticket will instead be valid for 24 hours.

This is one of the great advantages of this bus tour over other companies or other city tours, whose tickets are only valid on the same day.

How it works

Simply go to any of the stops indicated on the itinerary and wait for the bus. The daytime tour operates from 10:00 to 17:00, and the bus runs every hour. You can take this tour every day of the week

For the evening tour you must show your confirmation at the start of the tour, at 99 Jefferson Street, San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf. The tour departs every day of the year at 18:30, except December 24th and 31st.

Chinatown Tour

All options on this San Francisco bus tour include a walking tour of Chinatown, where you'll have a professional guide take you around the neighbourhood and show you the sights and sounds of what is probably one of the most colourful and authentic neighbourhoods in the United States.

Sausalito Tour

If you choose the deluxe option, your experience will include a tram tour of Sausalito. The tour lasts one hour and is available from 10:15am to 4:30pm daily. The tram departs every 15-30 minutes, and you will pass through the Golden Gate Bridge both on the way to and from Sausalito.

Sausalito is a small town across the bay from San Francisco, famous for its little houseboats and fishing pier. From there, and from the ferry back to San Francisco, you can take some very nice pictures of the Golden Gate and Alcatraz, and I recommend that before returning you take a nice walk around Sausalito as it has a unique charm.

Most Hop On Hop Off tours of San Francisco take place on open top buses. The views you'll get from the bus will allow you to take great photos, as you'll have a perspective from the first floor of a bus that other tourists won't have.

The Hop On Hop Off bus is a great way to get around the city and this is something that many people don't realise: you can use the bus as a form of transport, as it covers most of the interesting areas of San Francisco and you can hop on and off whenever you feel like it.

The night tour is a blast and very worthwhile, as seeing San Francisco lit up at night is a must do. The tour focuses on the Pier 35 area, from where you can see the iconic bridge and the city skyline.

If you're visiting Sausalito, you can choose to stay in this charming city to wander around and explore at your leisure and then return by ferry to San Francisco, which doubles as a cruise as you'll have amazing views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.

In addition to the bus tours, I recommend you to discover San Francisco on foot with a more specific tour. You can take a tour of the city's financial district, one of the most interesting in the United States for being the mecca of the world's leading technology companies, take a cruise around the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, and discover all the attractions the city has to offer.

And if you are especially interested in visiting Alcatraz, I recommend you to read my guide on Alcatraz tickets where you will find tips and tricks on how to get the best tickets to visit the famous San Francisco prison.