San Francisco Is a Golden Gate to House Sitting

If it's a place you can leave your heart in, San Francisco must be a lovely city for house sitting. Built on a fort erected by the Spaniards in 1776 at the Golden Gate, the city is named after St. Francis of Assisi after whom a mission was established there. It is part of a metropolitan area in California with a population of more than 4 million people.

San Francisco has aboout 50 hills inside the city limits and many neighborhoods like Nob Hill, Russian Hill and Pacific Heights are named after the hills on which they are situated. The famous cable cars of song carry people up and down the hills of the city. In the northeast section of San Francisco, bounded by Market Street to the south is the city's traditional center. Here you will find the financial district, and Union Square which is the main shopping and hotel district. San Francisco, however, is peppered with many mixed-use, culturally-rich streets filled with restaurants, boutiques, cafes, bars, shops through which one can leisurely walk in search of something novel and interesting. Here are some of the more popular sections of the city.

Golden Gate Bridge – One of the best known symbols of San Francisco (and the USA in general), it is a 2.7 kilometer suspension bridge of steel with 6 lanes spanning the Golden Gate and linking San Francisco to Marin County. The walkway is open to both pedestrians and cyclists, together or exclusively, depending upon the time of day.

Fisherman's Wharf – It roughly spans the northern waterfront area of the city and is reached by the F Market streetcar or the Powell-Mason cable car. The area is the site of The Cannery shopping center, Ghirardelli Square, Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum, Wax Museum and many restaurants famous for fresh seafood. Fisherman's Wharf hosts many events including the Fourth of July fireworks display.

Chinatown – The oldest Chinatown in the USA, this area has the largest Chinese community outside Asia. Referred to as a “city within a city”, it has kept its own customs, language, social clubs and places of worship. Here, one can find over 300 restaurants, shops selling oriental herbs or spices, and witness dragon dances amid Chinese temples and pagoda roofs.

Nob Hill – At the intersection of California and Powell Streets, it is home to many of San Francisco's upper class families and yuppies. Here, four of San Francisco's most expensive hotels – Fairmont Hotel, Mark Hopkins Hotel, Stanford Court and Huntington Hotel – are located. Here, too, you can find Grace Cathedral, copied after Notre Dame Cathedral, and one of San Francisco's largest.

Japantown – Also known as Little Osaka, it is the country's largest and oldest Japanese enclave. The Japan Center here is the site of three Japanese-oriented shopping centers, the five-tiered concrete Peace Pagoda, Japanese restaurants, hotels, banks and other shops. Japantown is also the place to go to for the annual Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival every April and the Nihonmachi Street Fair in August.

There's no end to discovering new and entertaining things when you do your house sitting in the City by the Bay.