San Francisco can be a great city to get lost in.  It’s got a great deal of diversity, culture, and history, and most of the time the weather is fairly mild and moderate.  It’s also a great location if you like metropolitan hustle and bustle, gridlock, and crowded streets and buildings.  If you’re not really into those kinds of things, but find yourself in San Francisco none the less wondering what there is to do that doesn’t involve crowds larger than a hundred people, then consider taking a day (or weekend) trip to quaint, quiet Tiburon.

Tiburon is located almost directly north of San Francisco, across the bay.  It rests on a fragile spit of land just northwest of Angel Island and gets its name from the large quantities of leopard sharks that were once found at the city’s shores.  The word “Tiburon” is Spanish for “shark”.  To get to this small little piece of non-crowded California coastal town heaven, you’ll need to either drive, which is not the way in which I arrived in Tiburon, or take a ferry.  The ferry leaves from San Francisco’s Pier 41, near Fisherman’s Wharf, a notoriously-touristy part of the city.

I really dislike crowds of tourists and touristy things.  I know that Tiburon is considered fairly touristy, but when I’m left to my own devices to decide whether I want to spend a day in the company of ten thousand tourists or just a few hundred, I’ll take the latter.  It was almost even more comforting to board the ferry to Tiburon from the Pier 41 area, since it was a tourist experience not unlike holding your breath underwater for one minute, where the last ten seconds are almost unbearable, yet they truly create a metal atmosphere where you can really appreciate the first breath above water.  Pier 41 was the storm and the ferry ride and day spent in Tiburon was the quiet reconciliation that comes after any major storm has hit and left a trail of damage in its wake, mental, physical, psychological, or otherwise.

The ferry ride was very peaceful.  Round trip it cost me about $19.  It was worth every cent just to get out on the water and away from the crowds.  We passed very close to Alcatraz and Angel Island and I was able to snap quite a few pictures and enjoy these places from perspectives not witnessed by the masses.  My arrival in Tiburon was quite uneventful, but at least there were no crowds.  It seemed strange to me that I could be so close to a crowded, bustling place like San Francisco, yet be surrounded by a town straight out of 1950.

American flags were everywhere, as were reasonably priced wine bars, Italian bistros, and sushi establishments.  I took my time walking down Main Street, which at one point in time was nothing more than a gravel bar connecting to islands.  Sure there was a good amount of touristy looking shops and boutiques, but at least the scenery didn’t resemble a giant concrete world of grey and brown, covered in crowds and noise and bad-smelling air.

I would highly recommend the trip to Tiburon to anyone looking to get away from the crowded streets of San Francisco.  I felt at ease immediately after arriving in this small city, full of history and charm.