New San Francisco Travel Guide Out
Good Globetrotter Guidebook Published for the City by the Bay
Jul 4, 2008
The new edition of the San Francisco Travel Guide in New Holland's Globetrotter series shows that not all guidebook writing is mundane. Author Mick Sinclair not only knows the city well but he writes about it well, too. This is a rare thing for a guidebook, but from the very first page of the Introduction, he draws you into the city's story, and really makes you want to visit the City by the Bay.
Sinclair didn't leave his heart in San Francisco, but brought it back home with him to enable his love and passion for California's most beautiful city to shine through in his writing. But this is also a very practical guide, and alongside that first page of the Introduction is the author's personal pick of San Francisco's Top Attractions:
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- Chinatown
- Alcatraz Island
- Golden Gate Bridge
- Haight-Ashbury
- Golden Gate Park
- Oakland Museum of California
This is the third edition of this San Francisco travel guide, and Sinclair has been visiting the city, and California, for the last twenty years. He has written six guides to the Golden State and its cities, and writes regularly for newspapers and magazines worldwide, and for websites. So he should know what he's talking about.
He divides San Francisco into seven districts, with an eighth chapter on the Bay Area generally, covering Berkeley, Oakland and Marin County. Each one starts with a "Don't Miss" section of that area's top attractions – useful if you're only able to see one area, or if your time in the city is limited to a short break.
Each chapter also has the two things which make the book stand out, apart from the author's writing style: the side panels and the maps. The side panels are an enjoyable feature of the Globetrotter guides. They allow the author to include snippets of information or history, amusing anecdotes and fun facts, which maybe don't fit into the main flow of the text. So, for instance, there's a fascinating little story about the Russians who founded what is now the Fort Ross State Historic Park in Marin County, and about the Levi Strauss Factory in the Mission District. The two-page spread on Alcatraz island has extra little boxes about the Birdman of Alcatraz and the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz.
Then there are the maps. The book comes with a huge free map of San Francisco, with street index, and inset maps of the Monterey Peninsula, Berkeley, Oakland, the Golden Gate Park, even as far as Yosemite. On the back are maps of Central California and the area around San Francisco. If the map has one fault it's that it's too big for easy reading, but that doesn't matter as the appropriate bits of the map are every few pages within the book itself. And very clear maps they are too, nice and easy on the eye.
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The Bottom Line
Given the book's readability and its affordable price, the inclusion of a detailed map is a great bonus, and the book's handy pocket size (128 pages, about 7"x5") means it's hard to fault.
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Practical Information
The Globetrotter San Francisco Travel Guide is published by New Holland Publishers at £6.99 in the UK, and $10.95 in the USA, where it's distributed by the Globe Pequot Press.
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