In love with San Francisco

I have always disagreed with my peers at Tech that living in the US (read Atlanta as this is my primary point of reference) can get boring for people from vibrant cities like Mumbai or Bengaluru or Chennai. Ignorance is bliss. Enlightenment came in the form of San Francisco.

I spent a total of 30 waking hours in the city. During this period, I was able to visit the Golden Gate Bridge (obviously), Fisherman's Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, Crooked Street, Golden Gate Park, Ocean Beach, Alcatraz Prison as well as eat at a Vietnamese, an Italian, a Mexican and a "garlic" restaurant for lunch/dinner. All using a combination of an awesome public transport network and long walks.

Hear ye, o tourists to SF:

1. Try visiting SF on a non-foggy day. Understandably, this is bloody difficult considering SF is known for the fog. 
2. Use public transport only to get to the general area of visitation - it is infinitely better to walk through the streets of SF in spite of gradients reaching up to 70 degrees as this allows you to actually feel the vibe of the city. Plus, in most cases, you save a lot of time this way.
3. Being a vegetarian, I was unable to "pig out" in Little China. However, for ones willing to experiment with their food, this is probably the proverbial "heaven on earth". Apart from Little China, go to "Stinking Rose" without fail. Anyone who does not go to this place has not seen San Francisco at all!!! Note that, you must take your own breath-mints to this restaurant, as the ones that you are given at the end of your meal there is woefully inadequate (check out http://www.thestinkingrose.com). You are bound to have the opportunity to taste a million different cuisines (including Pakistani-Indian food at every second street), so always be prepared to keep your pockets a little loose and ensure that you have a cast-iron stomach. Also, "Sunflower" (the Vietnamese restaurant that I went to) is ridiculously good for food that is nowhere close to being expensive (even by student standards).
4. Make sure you spend at least an hour or so sampling the drinks and chocolates at Ghirardelli Square. I regret not doing that :(... Btw, the Gingerbread Latte is to die for...
5. Cycle (or walk) across the Golden Gate Bridge - whether or not the weather is ice-cold. It's a tremendous experience! You can rent cycles at reasonable prices almost everywhere in the city.
6. Alcatraz deserves 4hrs even though they "expect" you to finish the tour in 2hrs. And believe you me, you are actually creeped out when you "enter the 'hole' and close your eyes, imagining that you are imprisoned there". Weirdly enough, Alcatraz was apparently amongst the very few prisons (if not the only one) where the prisoners were treated extremely well, with three square meals a day apart from daily exercise and the like. You can also see a lot of the run-down structures from the movie "The Rock" starring one really bad actor, Sean Connery and Ed Harris.
7. Ocean Beach (the last station on the J line in the train system) is one spot that is generally overlooked by almost all tourists to the city. At this point, you are bang in the middle of the ruins of a salt-water spa on the Pacific Ocean next to the western edge of Golden Gate Park. It's an awesome place to be around sunset. Moreover, there is a cafe on the beachfront that offers the best Irish Coffee that I have ever had in my life.

You have 7 not-to-miss things to do and have about 24hrs to do them (with the remainder for the other touristy stuff like Fisherman's Wharf, Crooked Street, etc.)

I assure you that you will not get tired...

San Francisco will not let you get tired...

Have fun...