Golden Gate Park

When folks in San Francisco refer to ‘the park,’ there’s only one thing they can be talking about: Golden Gate Park. This is Central Park’s west coast big twin, coming in at over a thousand acres. From above, it is an amazing sight: an enormous, skinny green rectangle set amid an endless sprawl of gleaming houses. Seen from the ground, it is no less wonderful.

Garden of Eden

Start with the gardens: you’ve got a bunch to choose from. The Botanical Gardens at Strybing Arboretum cover fifty acres and plunge you into the wilderness. The Japanese Tea Gardens cut quite a contrast, being much smaller and more cultivated and serene. You can in fact drink tea there too. Then there’s the Tulip Garden and the Rose Garden, which are both fairly self-explanatory and completely charming. And lastly, don’t miss the Garden of Shakespeare’s Flowers, with more than 200 types of flower adorned with quotes from the Bard’s famous plays.

Books and Brawn

There’s so much do to here besides simply enjoying the nature. Be sure to visit the Conservatory of Flowers, which is the oldest Victorian greenhouse in America, and also the carousel on Kezar Drive. The California Academy of Sciences is found here too, and this huge complex contains an aquarium, a planetarium, a rain forest and a roof from which you can really take in the scale of the park.

If you want to get the blood running then there’s all sorts of opportunities for sports here too. Whether its archery, football, handball, cycling, rollerblading or even horse-riding, the park has facilities for everything. There’s even a whole golf course.