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Mexicana Flights from Mexico City, Mexico (MEX) to San Francisco (SFO)
As part of booking roundtrip flights which depart from US airports,
Orbitz is pleased to offer airline tickets on Mexicana, which operates a daily non-stop flight from Mexico City, Mexico (MEX) to San Francisco (SFO) regularly scheduled to depart at 6:55pm and arrive at 9:50pm. Usually an Airbus A319 is flown for this route. The average travel time from Mexico City, Mexico to San Francisco, CA is 4 hours and 55 minutes.
During your San Francisco vacation, don't miss these great establishments and attractions:
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts/Yerba Buena Gardens
The Yerba Buena Center, which opened in 1993, is the city's cultural facility, similar to New York's Lincoln Center but far more fun on the outside. It stands on top of the northern extension of the underground Moscone Convention Center. The center's two buildings present music, theater, dance, and visual arts. James Stewart Polshek designed the 755-seat theater, and Fumihiko Maki designed the Galleries and Arts Forum, which features three galleries and a space designed especially for dance. Cutting-edge computer art, multimedia shows, traditional exhibitions, and performances occupy the center's high-tech galleries.More commonly explored is the 5-acre Yerba Buena Gardens, a great place to relax in the grass on a sunny day and check out several artworks. The most dramatic outdoor piece is an emotional mixed-media memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. Created by sculptor Houston Conwill, poet Estella Majozo, and architect Joseph de Pace, it features 12 panels, each inscribed with quotations from King, sheltered behind a 50-foot-high waterfall. For most, this pastoral patch is a brief stopover to the surrounding attractions. New to the gardens in 2004 are seasonal free outdoor festivals held on varied dates from May through October. It's definitely worth discovering whether you can catch one of these, as performances include dance, music, poetry, and more by the San Francisco Ballet, Opera, and Symphony and others; see www.ybgf.org for details.On the periphery of Yerba Buena Gardens are a number of worthy individually operated excursions. In the Children's Center, Zeum (tel. 415/777-2800) includes a cafe, interactive cultural center, bowling lanes, ice-skating rink, fabulous 1906 carousel, and interactive play and learning garden. Sony's Metreon Entertainment Center (tel. 415/369-6000; www.metreon.com) is a 350,000-square-foot complex housing great movie theaters, an IMAX theater, a bountiful gourmet food court, interactive attractions (including one that features Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are and surprisingly exciting virtual bowling), and shops. As part of the plan to develop this area as the city's cultural hub, the California Historical Society opened at 678 Mission St. in 1995 and is home to a research library and a publicly accessible California photography and fine arts collection.
Cable Cars
Although they may not be San Francisco's most practical means of transportation, cable cars are certainly the best loved and are a must-experience when visiting the city. Designated official historic landmarks by the National Park Service in 1964, they clank up and down the city's steep hills like mobile museum pieces, tirelessly hauling thousands of tourists each day to nowhere in particular.London-born engineer Andrew Hallidie invented San Francisco's cable cars in 1869. He got the idea by serendipity. As the story goes, Hallidie was watching a team of overworked horses haul a heavily laden carriage up a steep San Francisco slope. As he watched, one horse slipped and the car rolled back, dragging the other tired beasts with it. At that moment, Hallidie resolved that he would invent a mechanical contraption to replace such horses, and just 4 years later, in 1873, the first cable car made its maiden run from the top of Clay Street. Promptly ridiculed as "Hallidie's Folly," the cars were slow to gain acceptance. One early onlooker voiced the general opinion by exclaiming, "I don't believe it -- the damned thing works!"Even today, many visitors have difficulty believing that these vehicles, which have no engines, actually work. The cars, each weighing about 6 tons, run along a steel cable, enclosed under the street in a center rail. You can't see the cable unless you peer straight down into the crack, but you'll hear its characteristic clickity-clanking sound whenever you're nearby. The cars move when the gripper (not the driver) pulls back a lever that closes a pincerlike "grip" on the cable. The speed of the car, therefore, is determined by the speed of the cable, which is a constant 9 1/2 mph -- never more, never less.The two types of cable cars in use hold a maximum of 90 and 100 passengers, and the limits are rigidly enforced. The best views are from the outer running boards, where you have to hold on tightly when taking curves.Hallidie's cable cars have been imitated and used throughout the world, but all have been replaced by more efficient means of transportation. San Francisco planned to do so, too, but the proposal met with so much opposition that the cable cars' perpetuation was actually written into the city charter in 1955. The mandate cannot be revoked without the approval of a majority of the city's voters -- a distant and doubtful prospect.San Francisco's three existing cable car lines form the world's only surviving system of cable cars, which you can experience for yourself should you choose to wait in the endless boarding line (up to a 2-hr. wait in summer).
California Academy of Sciences
Originally clustered around the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park (in multiple buildings) and intending to return there around 2008 after a complete rebuild, this grouping of outstanding museums is now across from Moscone West, near the Yerba Buena Gardens and Center for the Arts. In its new location the Steinhart Aquarium houses some 5,400 animals, including seahorses, turtles, snakes, and poison dart frogs as well as a two-story 20,000-gallon living coral reef featuring Harlequin Tush fish, Yellow Tangs, sea stars, and a giant clam. Kids love the "touch tide pool" where they can get their mitts on live sea life.An edited version of the Natural History Museum has also been transplanted and hosts changing exhibits such as "Ants: Hidden Worlds Revealed," which shows the insects in action within six different live ant colonies. Some of the museum's permanent displays have moved, too, including Snake Alley, where terrestrial snakes reside; Astrobiology, an exhibit exploring life in extreme environments; and ScienceNOW, which presents a frequently changing display of Academy research, breaking science news, and expeditions around the globe. Toddlers will love the Nature Nest, an education center with hands-on learning activities.Families should look into the Academy's calendar of events, which includes fun kid-friendly festivities such as face-painting, storytelling, animal origami, and exhibit-related stories and demonstrations.
The Savoy Hotel
A European-style hotel through and through, the Savoy is one of my favorite moderately priced downtown hotels (The Warwick Regis, see below, is my other top pick). With a nice cozy apartment-like feel to each guest room, old well-cleaned bathrooms with original tiles, 18th-century period furnishings, fluffy featherbeds, and goose-down pillows, it's easy to relax here. Not all rooms are alike -- they can be small, but each has beautiful white wood shutters, full-length mirrors, and two-line telephones. Guests also enjoy access to the newly relocated Millennium, San Francisco's only gourmet vegan restaurant, which moved here from the Civic Center in 2003.
W San Francisco Hotel
Starwood Hotels & Resorts' 31-story property is as modern and hip as its fashionable clientele. Sophisticated, slick, and stylish, it suits its neighbors, which include the Museum of Modern Art, the Moscone Center, and the Metreon Sony entertainment center. The striking gray granite facade, piped with polished black stone, complements the octagonal three-story glass entrance and lobby. The hip, urban style extends to the guest rooms, which have a residential feel. Each contains a "luxury" feather bed with a goose-down comforter and pillows, Waterworks linens, an oversize dark-wood desk, an upholstered chaise longue, and louvered blinds that open to (usually) great city views. Each room also contains a compact media wall complete with a Sony CD and videocassette player, an extensive CD library, and a 27-inch color TV with Internet service (and an infrared keyboard). Bathrooms are supersleek and stocked with Aveda products. Furthering the supercool vibe is a bi-level bar and XYZ restaurant, which serves fresh and bold American fare within a zippy white-on-white interior. All in all, since 2000, this has been one of the top places to be.
Villa Florence
Located 1/2 block south of Union Square, fronting the Powell Street cable car line, the seven-story Villa Florence is in one of the liveliest sections of the city (no need to drive, 'cause you're already here). In 2004, a renovation brightened up the reasonably affordable rooms considerably. In its newest reincarnation, Villa Florence provides guests a taste of contemporary Italian flare with all new cherrywood furniture and luxury perks such as 27-inch flatscreen TVs with DVD players (with DVDs upon request) and CD players. You'll like the large, comfortable beds draped in down comforters with Frette duvets, as well as such frivolities as Aveda bath products, Frette bathrobes, and umbrellas. The hotel's ground-floor restaurant helps make it a worthy contender among Union Square's medium-priced inns -- as if the location alone weren't reason enough to book a room. Adjacent to the hotel is Kuleto's, one of downtown's most bustling and stylish Italian restaurants.
