San Carlos, CA
Old-school diner right on the San Carlos ramp with window seats on the runway; 30-plus omelette builds and corned beef hash made in-house. Breakfast and lunch daily, 7am to 2pm. The Hiller Aviation Museum is a short walk up Skyway Road; make it a double stop.
A short-runway Bay Area GA strip on the Peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose. Home to the Hiller Aviation Museum — a deep collection of vertical flight history including the Hiller XH-44 (1944, the first coaxial helicopter), the YH-32 Hornet ramjet helicopter, and the only surviving examples of several experimental rotorcraft from the 1940s-50s. Stanley Hiller Jr. was a vertical flight pioneer; this is his legacy. Right under SFO's Class B; arrivals from the north require careful airspace navigation.
The Golden Gate Bridge spans the strait between SF and Marin. International Orange paint pops against blue water — visible from 30+ miles in clear weather. Alcatraz is the small flat island ~2nm SE of the bridge.
On the field at KSQL San Carlos. The museum is the long building with a glass-fronted hangar on the airport's southwest corner, parallel to Highway 101. KSQL itself is right on the bay edge — short final crosses the salt ponds and a narrow strip of bay shoreline.