Emeryville, CA Outdoor Activities

Led by local historian Rick Evans, guide of the SF Weekly's Best Walking Tour of 2009, the Chinatown walking tour escorts guests through a complex and densely populated neighborhood with an engaging narrative about its rich history. Urban explorers weave their way down narrow alleys and across plazas, discovering the area's charms and the Chinese community's role in the growth of San Francisco and the state. The seasoned tour guide regales groups of no more than six with insightful tales of the oldest Chinatown in North America bolstered by years of experience and a storytelling degree from the Mother Goose Technical Institute. Highlights of the tour include visits to the Street of Painted Balconies, a colorful, crowded street saturated with international flags and upstairs temples, and a cathedral completed during the Gold Rush in 1854, which was recognized as the first Roman Catholic church on the West Coast. The one-mile trek makes stops at a fortune-cookie factory—to watch cookies cool, harden, and form their all-knowing cores—and the neighborhood's oldest herbal shop, which is stocked with Chinese medicine and tongue depressors.

In the past five years, City Sightseeing tour company has shuttled 1.5 million passengers around San Francisco in signature double-decker, open-top tour buses. Within the city itself, four different routes wend through various neighborhoods and past iconic landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and Danny Tanner’s favorite grocery store. Outside the city, tours also run to Muir Woods, wine country, the picturesque towns of Monterey and Carmel, and Yosemite National Park.

Since 1978, the experienced captains at Rendezvous Charters have staged picturesque pirouettes through San Francisco Bay waters aboard a fleet of vessels, including two schooners, two yachts, and a slew of motor yachts. The seafaring specialists welcome passengers for cash-bar cruises aboard the Bay Lady, a custom-built schooner that accommodates up to 77 passengers and boasts a cockpit big enough to seat 56 people or 30 pandas with sailor caps. Rendezvous Charters also works with clients to plan private chartered cruises and team-building events for businesses and recreational groups.

Mr. Toad specializes in small, personalized tours that offer a better overview of the bay area than the Full House intro. Instead of the modern vehicles frequently sighted touring urban landscapes, Toad tours take place in pre-1930s vehicles that run on propane, the power behind grills and floating cities. The nimble rides can easily navigate the hilly cityscape along the route.

The high-end fleet of Hornblower Cruises & Events fills ports up and down the California coast, as well as in New York, with similar eco-friendly extravagance. Founded by environmental engineer Terry MacRae, Hornblower puts its luxe navy to use hosting dining, entertainment, special-event, and sightseeing cruises, as well as journeying to such storied landmarks as Alcatraz Island and the Statue of Liberty. Beyond these cruises, Terry's team champions green practices through the Respect Our Planet initiative, which works to develop and promote earth-considerate practices such as using hybrid boats that draw power from the sun.

With its impenetrable fog, gusty wind, and rough currents, San Francisco Bay is known the world over as one of the most challenging places to sail. It's for this very reason that the San Francisco Sailing Company's Sailing School has set up shop here: "If you can sail the San Francisco Bay," they declare on their website, "you [can] sail anywhere in the world." The seasoned instructors instill what they know thoroughly and quickly. In fact, after completing just two two-day classes, students at the school earn their ASA certification and the confidence to sail the Bay on their own. The school offers loftier training, as well, providing the know-how needed to charter a multiday cruise on a big boat or navigate out on the open water.