With its jagged coastal edges, architectural paragons, lofty peaks, and ever-shifting layers of fog and sun, San Francisco invites exploration on foot. The beauty of walking is the slower pace it affords, tempting curious travelers to the top of the next hill, past the carefully tended flowers of hidden lanes, into bars where gold miners swapped tall tales, and through parks still suffused with the patchouli of a bygone era. While the hills inarguably present a few natural challenges, your efforts are well rewarded, and there is nearly always an inviting place to eat, drink, and take a pause. Walking allows you to make unexpected detours, noticing the renegade public art, fairy gardens, and pageantry of people that make San Francisco’s streets an open theater. Often the best gems are tucked away on pedestrian-only lanes.
Distinct neighborhoods, shaped by the waves of immigrants who have arrived since the city’s inception, are so close to each other that you can watch fishermen pull in their nets in the misty gloom of early light, choose some dim sum in Chinatown, take a nap in a park surrounded by colorful Victorians, catch surfers carving waves in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, and dance to Latin beats until morning, all in a single urban jaunt. And then you can rise the next morning and have a completely different experience.
San Francisco likes to lead the charge but also waxes nostalgic for another time. Proud of its civil rights history, unabashed about its bawdy pirate past, venerated for its Summer of Love, San Francisco is a city that rebuilds and reinvents itself constantly but never forgets its past. The city has pulled itself up by its bootstraps following earthquakes, fires, and economic booms and busts. The more you learn about the city’s riotous past, the more you want to know about the footsteps that fell before yours.
All of this said, the face of transportation in the city has changed, and we invite you to explore all manner of transit options to meet our starting points. The options are plentiful: ferries, water taxis, historic cable cars, vintage streetcars, buses, BART, ride-share and bicycle services, electric bikes, and scooters.
But most of all, this book invites you to enjoy the journey. These are not purposeful walks but meandering, inquisitive strolls that focus on the story behind the buildings and the intriguing details that you’ll easily miss if you’re moving too fast. The philosophy of this book is to slow down, pet a dog, chat up a barista, help someone up a steep hill with her groceries, sketch a hilltop view, and become a part of the fabric of this spectacular city.