Places to visit in or near San Francisco Bay Area

I love to roam around San Francisco Bay Area, its an amazing place to do so. Here is a shortened list among many thousands of great places to go here.

• Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39 and Ghirardelli Square, covering about half a dozen blocks along the waterfront, constitute much of the stereotypical San Francisco image and together are perhaps the most popular things to do in San Francisco. Tourists walking here are entertained by street performers and tempted by souvenir shops and restaurants.
• The Golden Gate Bridge is an engineering marvel. Not only is it one of the city's most enjoyable things to do, but it's also one of the most-photographed sights in the world. A walk on it is a must.
  
• Alcatraz, the former prison, wasn't always a place people wanted to go, but today it's one of the city's most popular sights. Reserve your tickets in advance to avoid disappointment.
• Union Square, one of the city's three original parks, is now a public space atop a multi-level underground parking garage and ringed with elegant shops and hotels. The Powell cable car line begins about a block away, and the theatre district is nearby.

• Cable Cars are often called San Francisco's moving landmark.
  

• Chinatown expresses what Western architects thought Chinese buildings should look like. There's much here that's created just for the tourist, but with our hints, you can get a glimpse of the "real" Chinatown in its alleys and shops.
  

• Lombard, the "Crookedest" Street is neither the crookedest street in San Francisco nor the steepest, but it's surely the best-known. The "crooked" section is the block below Hyde Street. No car to drive down? Take the cable car to Hyde and Lombard and walk.

• Coit Tower, atop Telegraph Hill offers panoramic bay and city views, and a bit of San Francisco in the 1930s preserved in its murals.
• The Exploratorium is a modern, hands-on science museum housed in The Palace of Fine Arts, a Roman-style remainder of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The outdoor rotunda, and its lagoon, are some of the city's most-photographed sights
• Golden Gate Park is the city's largest park. One of the most popular attractions in the park is the Japanese Tea Garden, but there's plenty more to see here, including the Strybing Arboretum, California Academy of Sciences and Conservatory of Flowers.
• Ferry Building Marketplace is one of the city's liveliest venues as its shops fill with local artisan food shops and restaurants, and tourists mix with locals at the weekly Farmers' markets.
• Twin Peaks - wonderful view of San Francisco and nearby places from a less known but nice place.
  

In the Bay Area

Santa Cruz Beach
Monterey Bay Aquarium

Away from San Francisco

Yosemite
Lake Tahoe
Big Sur
Muir Woods

More References

http://gocalifornia.about.com/cs/sanfrancisco/a/sfbest.htm
http://www.pubclub.com/sanfrancisco/postparty.htm
http://www.virtuar.com/ysf2/#tourindex

http://www.destination360.com/north-america/us/california/california.php
http://www.indospectrum.com/travels/san_francisco_2.html