Where the Alcatraz boats actually leave from
From Pier 33, signposted Alcatraz Landing, about half a mile east along the Embarcadero — not from Fisherman's Wharf, and not from Pier 41, which is where a great many older accounts send people. It is a walkable distance but it is not the same place, and a visitor who turns up at the Wharf holding a timed ticket will miss the sailing. The booking, the operator and the rest are under Alcatraz.
Bay cruises and the ferries to Sausalito, Tiburon and Angel Island do go from the Wharf piers.
The good parts, most of them free
- The sea lions at Pier 39. They began hauling out on the marina's wooden floating docks after the Loma Prieta earthquake in October 1989, and simply never left — the berths were eventually conceded to them. Numbers swing enormously with the season and the fish: several hundred in winter, sometimes almost none in late summer. They are loud, they smell strongly, and they are the best free spectacle on the waterfront.
- Hyde Street Pier, part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, where a line of historic vessels is moored and can be boarded — including the Balclutha, a square-rigged ship of 1886 that rounded Cape Horn, and the C.A. Thayer, a lumber schooner of 1895. This is the part of the Wharf that visitors skip and should not.
- The Maritime Museum, in the old Aquatic Park bathhouse just west — a streamline-moderne building of the 1930s with murals and mosaics from the federal arts programmes, and free to enter.
- Pier 45, where the USS Pampanito, a Second World War submarine, and the SS Jeremiah O'Brien, one of only two surviving operational Liberty ships, are open as museum vessels. The name is O'Brien, which older accounts routinely misspell.
- Musée Mécanique, also at Pier 45, and the most charming thing at the Wharf by a wide margin: a working collection of several hundred antique coin-operated amusements — orchestrions, fortune tellers, automata, early arcade machines — almost all of them still functioning. There is no admission charge. It costs whatever gets fed into the machines, which is how it was always meant to work.
The indoor attractions, which are in flux
This is worth a paragraph because it is where older guides are least reliable. Ripley's Believe It or Not, a fixture for roughly six decades, announced on 22 September 2026 that the Fisherman's Wharf branch would close by the end of the year; no reason was given. The old Wax Museum now trades as Madame Tussauds. Several other indoor attractions have come and gone over the past few years.
Nothing on the Wharf should be planned around without first confirming it is open. Named attractions are the fastest-rotting part of any guide to this particular half-mile.
Eating
The walk-away crab stands along Jefferson Street are the oldest commerce here and still the most worthwhile: Dungeness crab, cracked, with bread and butter, eaten standing up.
Two things to know. The Dungeness season traditionally opens in November and runs into spring, but recent commercial openings have repeatedly been delayed to protect migrating whales from entanglement in fishing gear — so crab eaten in August is not local and not in season. And sourdough is a genuine San Francisco speciality rather than a marketing line; the local starter gives a distinctly sour, chewy loaf that is difficult to reproduce elsewhere. Clam chowder served in a hollowed sourdough loaf is the Wharf's signature dish and is precisely as touristic as it sounds, which does not make it bad.
The aquarium at Pier 39 is covered separately, along with the city's other two.
Ghirardelli Square and The Cannery
Ghirardelli Square — spelt with two R's, which almost nothing manages — is the former Ghirardelli chocolate works, converted in the 1960s into shops and restaurants. It was one of the first large adaptive reuse schemes of its kind anywhere and the model for a great many since, and the illuminated sign on the roof is a landmark in its own right.
The Cannery, a Del Monte peach cannery of 1907 converted on the same principle, has had a harder time of it and its occupancy has varied considerably over the years.
Getting there, and how long to give it
The Powell–Hyde cable car terminates at Aquatic Park at the western end of the Wharf and the Powell–Mason at Taylor and Bay, two blocks short of it — see the cable cars. The F-line historic streetcars run the length of the Embarcadero from Market Street and are the most pleasant approach, and much quicker than queueing for a cable car.
An honest verdict on how much time it deserves: a morning. The sea lions, the ships at Hyde Street Pier, the Musée Mécanique and a crab sandwich fill that comfortably and well. The remainder is souvenir shops and queues. A visitor with three days in the city would do better to spend the afternoon in Chinatown, the Mission or Golden Gate Park — but the maritime park is genuinely first rate, and it is the part almost everybody walks past.
General practicalities are on the San Francisco page.