I’ve been hard pressed to come up with a day trip for a rainy San Francisco day. San Francisco is best in the dazzling sunlight, when you can hike along the bay or walk up and down hills discovering new neighborhoods. Those hills are much less inviting when gale force winds and freezing, pelting rain threaten to blow you over. (It is a different kind of rain out west.)
So, what to do? Head indoors, to the SFMOMA. It’s conveniently located in downtown San Francisco, so you can take the subway there, dash in the rain over to the MOMA, then dash onto lunch and shopping. All within a few square blocks.
We start at the SFMOMA, followed by lunch at the delicious Chaat Café. After that, it’s onto the shops of Union Square and, if it’s really raining hard, just give up completely and head to the Westfield Centre.
Day Trip to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Recommended Itinerary: (5 hours, 1.4 walking miles)
- A trip to the SFMOMA and SF MOMA store
- Lunch at the Chaat Café
- Shopping on Market Street
- Shopping at the Westfield Centre
What you’ll need to bring:
- An umbrella
- Walking shoes
- A windbreaker/scarf
1. Trip to the SFMOMA and SFMOMA Museum Store
The SFMOMA is on 3rd Street between Mission and Howard St. The easiest way to get there is on BART or MUNI metro, exiting at the Powell Street Station Stop. All BART and MUNI metro lines stop at Powell Street. (See here for how to ride BART and how to ride the MUNI metro.)
Due to the driving rain and new ‘The Steins’ Collect’ Exhibit, I believe every resident in the Bay Area was in line ahead of us at the ticket booth at the door. General Admission costs $18 for adults, $12 for adults over 62, and $11 for students. It is free for people in the military and children. If you’d like to go to the Steins exhibit, it’ll be an additional $7 and you’ll be assigned a time to see the exhibit.
The space inside is cavernous. The ground floor has the gift shop, restaurant, and coat check. The museum’s collection begins on the second floor.
I’m not the best when it comes to a lot of modern art. My old timey taste prefers classical and medieval art. Marble statues and gilded angels. So, at any modern exhibit, you’ll find me sitting on the Mies van der Rohe benches with my brow a-furrow. But, I kind of also love sitting on those benches, staring at a Jackson Pollock.
On our visit, the Stein Exhibit was intense. Each room in the exhibit mimics a living room or dining room in the Steins’ Paris homes. A large photograph on the wall shows how the original room looked – you can trace the art from the photograph to the wall in front of you. Kudos to the curator for that brilliant idea.
It’s quickly obvious why the exhibit exists — the Steins practically wallpapered their homes in Picassos. There is just so much art on display; it is tough to wrap your head around all that you’re seeing. And, the crowds. Oh, the masses. Oh, how crowded it was. I highly recommend seeing the exhibit, though, as a way to live through Picasso’s various periods and gain a better understanding of the trajectory of his art into the cubist period.
Make sure to hit up the SFMOMA Museum Store on your way out. It is roughly the same size as the museum’s gallery space. (Jokes!) They have all sorts of colorful and maybe less than practical kitchenware and gadgets. It might be the best gift shop in all of San Francisco.
2. Lunch at the Chaat Café
This is an old standby in our family. It is one of the few restaurants we go to in Union Square, and we will build entire weekends around a craving for their Papri Chat.
The Chaat Café is on 3rd Street, one door down from Folsom Street. It is Indian food, but the reason we go there is for the extensive North Indian chaat menu. I highly recommend the Papri Chat – fried and crunchy wafers covered in curried potatoes and chick peas, with yogurt and tamarind sauce and all sorts of other things. It is delicious.
We also ordered some samosas and Pani Puri. The Pani Puri is a little tricky – you get a plate of hollow balls, a chickpea salad, and a bowl of tamarind water. Use a spoon to delicately crack open a hole into a ball, fill the ball with the salad, then spoon some liquid in. Eat it all in one bite. (It goes crunchSPLASH in your mouth, in an absolutely unique and delicious experience.)
3. Shopping on Market Street, or making a break for the Westfield Center
I hope you’ve gotten your culture in for the day, because it’s all about pretty merchandise from here on out. A lot of mall shops have stores on Market Street: Gap, Puma, Anthropologie. Within a block of Market Street, Powell Street has Urban Outfitters, Sephora, and DSW.
If the rain is getting to be too much, run for the Westfield Centre – SF’s downtown indoor mall on Market Street between 4th and 5th street. It is anchored by Bloomingdales and Nordstrom, along with 170 stores including J Crew, Banana Republic, and BCBG. There are also some great Japanese stationary shops and a unique gift/bookshop.
If it is still raining hard outside and things are getting desperate, you can head to the Century movie theater on the top floor and settle in for the night.
The entire ground floor is a fancy food court, and conveniently enough, you can get back on MUNI and BART directly from the ground floor – you don’t even have to go outside. Sometimes, spending a Saturday afternoon at the mall makes a lot of sense, even in San Francisco.
