Where to Stay in San Francisco With Family, Area by Area

The one San Francisco district built at child height: the Pier 39 sea lions are free, the coin-operated machines at Musee Mecanique cost quarters rather than tickets, the Aquarium of the Bay charges 28.25 dollars for an adult and 20.25 for a child of 4 to 12 at the door, and Ghirardelli Square is free to wander. It is also the flattest part of the city, which with a stroller matters more than anything on the hills. The hotel stock is the largest cluster of big family-friendly chains outside downtown.

Good to know: There is no rail here at all. The E streetcar that once supplemented the F line is suspended with no current service on SFMTA's own page, so the links to downtown are the F streetcar, the two Powell cable cars and the buses, and the nearest BART station is Embarcadero on Market Street. Book the wharf for the wharf, not for fast connections.

Lombard Street between Van Ness and Divisadero is lined with 1950s motor inns, and several of them, the Coventry Motor Inn, the Chelsea Motor Inn and the Cow Hollow Inn and Suites among them, publish free parking for direct bookings on their own sites. Against downtown valet at 92 to 107 dollars a night, that is the single biggest saving available to a driving family in this city. Crissy Field and its free beach and lawns are at the end of the neighbourhood, and the Palace of Fine Arts is a stroll.

Good to know: There is no rail of any kind in the Marina, so downtown is a surface bus ride on the 30, the 22 or the 43. One listings trap: the Lombard Inn, one of the strip's best-known names, states on its own site that it has permanently closed, and booking sites still show it.

Staying inside the park means waking up next to the Tunnel Tops, whose Outpost playground is free and open every day, with Crissy Field, Fort Point and the Golden Gate Bridge walk all free and all close. The Walt Disney Family Museum charges 30 dollars for an adult and 15 for a youth of 6 to 17, with under-6s free. The free PresidiGo shuttle runs to the Salesforce Transit Center downtown in a stated 25 minutes, on weekdays from 6am to 7pm and weekends from 9am.

Good to know: Lodging inside the park is two small properties, and instead of city hotel tax they carry a 16 percent National Park Fee on accommodation, so the tax saving guides imagine is not real. Groceries and casual restaurants are thin inside the park, and after the shuttle stops running you are on regular Muni buses.

Every rail line the city has converges here: Powell Street BART and Muni Metro, the T Third subway with its direct run to Chinatown and the ballpark, the F streetcar on Market, and both Powell cable car lines starting their climb at the turnaround. For a family planning to ride BART in from the airport, 11.80 dollars for an adult and 5.90 for a youth in 29 minutes, this is the easiest arrival in the city. Hotel choice is the densest anywhere, from convention towers to small boutiques.

Good to know: The judgment call is directional. The Tenderloin begins one to two blocks west of Powell along Eddy, Ellis and Turk, and mid-Market between 5th and 8th carries a concentrated overnight street population. Families do fine here by picking a hotel east of Powell and north of O'Farrell and walking accordingly. This is geography, not a reason to skip the area.

All three cable car lines converge on Nob Hill, and the Cable Car Museum on Mason Street, which is genuinely free and doubles as the working powerhouse where the cables actually run, is the best free hour in the city for a mechanically minded child. The hotels at the summit are the grand historic names, with quieter independents on the slopes.

Good to know: The hill is the point and the problem. The climbs up Powell, Mason, Taylor and Jones from Union Square are the steepest pedestrian approach in the tourist core, which with a stroller turns a three-block walk into a workout. Budget either for the cable car at 9 dollars a head for everyone aged 5 and up, or for the 1 California bus.

The waterfront strip from the Ferry Building to Pier 39 is the city's best flat walk, and it holds the Exploratorium at Pier 15, which at 29.95 dollars for an adult and 19.95 for a child of 4 to 12 is the strongest science museum for the money in the city. The Ferry Building's food hall solves family meals, Golden Gate Ferry sails to Sausalito from the dock behind it, and Embarcadero station puts BART and Muni Metro underneath you.

Good to know: The hotels here are high-rise business chains, and the district keeps office hours: on a Saturday morning the streets behind the waterfront are quiet and the breakfast radius is thinner than the weekday buzz suggests. Fine for families who plan around the waterfront itself.

The old Italian quarter sits directly behind Fisherman's Wharf, which means you can walk to the sea lions in the morning and eat properly on Columbus Avenue at night. Washington Square's lawn absorbs small children, the Powell-Mason cable car crosses the neighbourhood, and the 30 bus runs through to Union Square and Caltrain.

Good to know: Hotel stock is small independents and boutiques with few genuine family rooms, so it suits a family of three or four better than a family of five. The Broadway nightlife strip runs along the neighbourhood's southern edge between Columbus and Montgomery; book north of it.