SAN FRANCISCO - Some trips begin before you board the plane. When a San Francisco native recommended Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, I was seduced in advance by his city: “A tiny square punctuated by steep hills, bounded on three sides by water … surprise vistas everywhere. You’ll be walking along and suddenly the ground will fall away and you’ll see straight down to the Bay, with the buildings lit up orange and pink … narrow houses, the windows like eyes and teeth, the wedding cake filigree, and looming behind it all … the rusty ghost of the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Feasting on surprising vistas, we wandered San Francisco’s hills, discovering a city with heart, soul and mystery to spare. Frisco boasts some 15 neighbourhoods and here are some favourites:

North Beach

Late afternoon, the Trieste Caffe: we laze over lattes (the best in the city) as a little girl approaches the cookie-laden counter. Her face falls. “Oh honey,” says the lady working the cash, “you like the ones with the sprinkles, don’t you? They’re all gone, but come back tomorrow, okay?”

That’s when I have my epiphany.

No matter how many famous names North Beach claims — native Joe DiMaggio and his bride, Marilyn Monroe; Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and all the Beat generation; Mary Keane (the “Big Eyes” artist from the current hit film); publisher/poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books — to this woman and her young customer, the Trieste (601 Viallejo) remains what it’s been since 1956: a corner café, run by the Giotta family.

Above: On a neighbourhood tour of San Francisco you meet people like Ana Handelman, who for 17 years has been welcoming visitors to the Trattoria Sodini’s.

To our left, an intense Californian scribbles away in his journal. (Legend says that Francis Ford Coppola wrote parts of The Godfather here.) But to the little girl dropping in after school, the Trieste is where they sell the best sugar cookies, with sprinkles.

Around the corner at 510 Green, Trattoria Sodini takes no reservations, but our luck holds: the last free table is ours. Ana Handelman, 17 years behind the bar, smiles for the camera and hands us her card. It reads, in part: “No Reservations, No Desserts, No Decaf.” Got it, Ana. Just superb Italian food, a full bar — and Frank Sinatra smiling from the walls.

Nob Hill

Arriving at The Hotel Carlton in lower Nob Hill, we’re dazzled by a troupe of Fellini-like characters hugging their good-byes: a woman sporting red-white-and-blue dreads, a top-hatted man, a myriad of sparkles and feathers. As for the Carlton lobby, think Casablanca: velvet couches, embroidered pillows, a giant white bird cage, a fire to counter the morning fog — which burns away by afternoon.

Tripping down Sutter Street, we pass wonderments of Victoriana — elegant buildings with zig-zag exterior fire escapes. Another hotel, the Vertigo, pays homage to Hitchcock’s San Francisco-based ’58 movie which runs on continuous loop behind the desk. On our way to 1574 California and the Cordon Bleu Vietnamese Restaurant, we watch as a boy completes a street mural of a VW bus. Squeezing into a table at this tiny Vietnamese spot, we enjoy the best “5 Spice Chicken outside Vietnam.” (If they served coffee, we’d probably be there still.)

Craving music, we head to Biscuits and Blues (401 Mason), where bluesman Daniel Castro belts out his electric tunes. “Anyone from Canada?” asks the affable Castro, sharing his admiration for Toronto’s legendary Powder Blues Band. Flaky biscuits and collard greens go down well with the blues.

Chinatown

Reachable by cable car — one of several excellent transit options — Chinatown is large, authentic. Strung with Chinese lanterns, dotted with temples, gift stores, restaurants, and TCM (traditional medicine) shops, Grant Street forms its bustling heart. Drying laundry pokes out from apartment windows: we could be in old Hong Kong.

Ducking into delicious dim sum on Jackson, for fresh green onion pancakes, har gow and melting-smooth custard tarts — a fabulous breakfast for $2.60 (U.S.). Exploring narrow Ross St. — not really a street at all, but the city’s oldest alley — home to pre-war “houses of negotiated affection,” we find Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory. Six fortunes for a dollar; 50 cents to photograph the man packaging them: tasty, crispy-brown, these are nothing like the cardboard versions we’re used to.

My fortune — “Wear yellow today and good luck will come” — sends me over to 814 Grant and Shangri-La Gifts, a beacon in a sea of sameness. A girl explains that “old ladies in Yunnan province” sew the store’s bright silk embroideries; her sister designs them into pendants and earrings. Dad knocks $20 off my choices — lots of yellow — while Mom smiles. Beautiful family, beautiful things: another world, this Chinatown, at once very old and very new.

Embarcadero and the Bay

The piers where Spanish ships “embarked” shoot slender fingers into San Francisco Bay. Sustained by Argentinian empanadas from El Porteño in the Ferry Building’s all-day market, we carry on to The Exploratorium, the city’s super-popular interactive science museum (Piers 15-17).

Left: San Francisco homes remain some of the most beautiful in the United States. Right: San Francisco’s colourful neighbourhoods have long been a draw for tourists and each offers something different and special.

“Does anybody want to drink from a toilet bowl?” asks a teacher of his fifth graders. Giggling, the brave try it out (the water in the never-used bowl is the same as that in the water fountain; presentation differs, is all). In this giant two-storied space overlooking the diamond-lit Bay, a zillion preconceptions are blasted apart, revealing the science of things large and small. Dissections occur on the hour; a “fog bridge” too. Science was never this much fun.

Passing Hyde Street Pier and its assortment of historic ships, we easily imagine the city’s seafaring past, “a city of ships, piers and tides,” wrote a Chilean visitor in 1852. Maritime National Historic Park comes as another surprise: a generous scoop of seafront where people sit quietly under trees, or stroll by water’s edge.

Here we discovered the 1939 Maritime Museum, a New Deal (WPA) project with entrancing “underwater” murals by American artists Hilaire Hiler and Sargent Johnson. The ocean liner-shaped building — originally the Aquatic Park Bathhouse — was our own on that sunny afternoon — we alone admired its colourful brilliance. Such are the mysteries and wonders of San Francisco.