San Francisco can be summed up in two words, our 'gay mecca'.

It remains the centre of LGBT equality in the United States and is still famed World-wide for its history in the emergence of gay rights. San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture. Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love.

The Castro is the results of the gay movement and remains in place to this day - the area is marked by large rainbow flags and probably one of the largest fortified gay communities in the World.

San Francisco also has its own Financial District and Union Square, the shopping and hotel district. Along the main waterfront is the infamous Fisherman's Wharf and this is where Alcatraz can be accessed from.

Cable cars carry residents and tourists alike up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill, once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to Fisherman's Wharf, a tourist area featuring Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, a residential neighbourhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street, North Beach, the city's version of Little Italy, and Telegraph Hill, which features Coit Tower. Nearby is San Francisco's Chinatown, established in the 1860s.

The Mission District is predominantly working-class and populated by immigrants from Mexico and Central America, but is also gentrifying. Haight-Ashbury, famously associated with 1960s hippie culture, is now heavily gentrified, although it still retains some bohemian character.

San Francisco was the setting of the TV series and renowned books - Tales of the City by Amistead Maupin, who recently followed up the series with new novel Michael T Oliver Lives.