I've been to San Francisco a few times in my life. As someone who lives in greater Los Angeles, it's about a 6-hour drive (if you take the 101, the scenic route) from my home to the city.

My favorite places in the city are North Beach, Dolores Park, and Golden Gate Park. In my opinion, Tony's is the best pizza restaurant in the city. See my website about it here.

The city has a modern multimodal transit system with Muni, BART, and other operators. Trams, historic "streetcars," metros, tram-buses, and the ubiquitous Cable Car all serve the city's transportation needs, as well as the only electrified commuter rail on the West Coast, Caltrain. Both Stanford and UC Berkeley are well served by transit, with the former by a Caltrain station and the latter by a BART station.