Marina

The operative word for this scenic corner of San Francisco is "fun." Besides excellent shopping and dining, there are three palace-style movie houses, live theater, museums, and miles of gorgeous paths and trails inside the Presidio and along the Marina Green. If you live here, you can wake up on a sunny Sunday, take in a latte with your paper on Chestnut Street, stroll to the Palace of Fine Arts, rollerblade on the Marina Green, and finish with dinner and a movie on Union Street. The Marina and Cow Hollow are separated by Lombard Street, a busy six-lane thoroughfare that whisks Marin Commuters towards downtown. Below Lombard in the more crowded Marina neighborhood, are 1920s "Marina-style" homes and apartments with practical layouts and lovely features like high-coved ceilings and bay windows. Above Lombard Street in Cow Hollow, you'll find older architecture with quaint cottages, dramatic mansions, and elegant, turn-of-the-century apartment buildings.

Todays Marina district was underwater until the area was built up with landfill for the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. The dramatic Palace of Fine Arts, designed by architect Bernard Maybeck as "a valentine for San Francisco," is the expositions only remaining structure. Originally made of plaster, the city rebuilt the Palace with permanent materials and it now houses the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum for children of all ages. The Mediterranean style flats and apartments of the Marina are home to mostly young, affluent professionals. The singles scene is world-renowned and includes not only the trendy bars and restaurants on Chestnut Street, but also the Marina Green jogging paths along the waterfront and even the Marina Safeway. Residences range from gorgeous, turn-of-the-century Victorians and Edwardians to brand new homes, with lots of renovated flats, condos and apartments.