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 very close to its most emblematic places. In a complete tour of its neighborhoods, you can get off at up to 24 stops located next to Pier 39, the Palace of Fine Arts and Union Square, among other places, and take a tour of the city at your own pace. The ticket starts at $64.

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 San Francisco daytime bus tour 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 want, 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 return 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 make the bus tour a good way to get a feel for San Francisco and then go deeper on your own.

The bus ticket will be valid for 24 hours if you redeem it after 3:00 pm, so you can potentially take advantage of 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 instructed otherwise, you just need to show that confirmation when you get on the bus. That said, your ticket will be valid for one day (but not 24 hours, it will be invalid at midnight 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

Just go to any of the stops indicated on the itinerary and wait for the bus. The day 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 beginning of the tour, at 99 Jefferson Street, San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf. The tour departs every day of the year at 6:30pm, except December 24th and 31st.

Chinatown Tour

All the options of this San Francisco bus tour include a walking tour of Chinatown, where you will have a professional guide who will take you around the neighborhood and show you the curiosities of what is probably one of the most colorful and genuine neighborhoods in the United States.

Sausalito Tour

If you choose the deluxe option, your experience will include a streetcar tour of Sausalito. The tour lasts one hour and you can take it from 10:15 am to 4:30 pm every day. The streetcar 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 floating cottages 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 of the Hop On Hop Off tours of San Francisco are on open top buses. The views you will have from the bus will allow you to take good pictures, since from the second floor of a bus you will have a perspective that other tourists will not have.

The Hop On Hop Off bus is a great way to get around the city and this is something that many people do not know: you can use the bus as a form of transportation, since it covers most of the interesting areas of San Francisco and you can get on and off whenever you feel like it.

The night tour is a blast and it is really worth it, since seeing San Francisco lit up at night is something that you have to do. The tour focuses on the Pier 35 area, from where you can see the iconic bridge and the city skyline.

If you are visiting Sausalito, you can choose to stay in this charming city to explore it at your leisure and then return by ferry to San Francisco, which doubles as a cruise as you will have incredible 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 that 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 jail.