We didn’t intend to explore by foot, it just kinda happened. I’ve been to SF enough times to know that it is too damn hilly to stroll around comfortably. In the words of my husband, “this is a silly place to build a city.” In his defense, this was shortly after I’d promised him that we could TOTALLY walk to see the Golden Gate Bridge without walking up any hills. Sure. Fortunately for me, the standard iPhone Maps app lacks a contour layer so my lies were safe until we were being stared in the face with something that ANY East Coaster would deem a mountain. I swear there was snow at the top. And they were handing out carabiners. And this guy was there:
Sherpa assigned to us to assist with San Francisco hills
Regardless, there we were, schlepping along trying to find the damn coast and encountering a hill at every turn and finally, The Presidio, a National Park south of the Golden Gate. It was hilly and sandy, and for a good chunk of the walk we were walking through people’s backyards, but regardless we finally came upon the on-ramp to the bridge. That seems to be the problem with walking in California cities; sometimes you just end up on a highway. Well! Not to worry as there was a promising sign up ahead pointing us towards the Palace of Fine Arts, which sounded quite surprising seeing as we were, again, basically walking along a highway. About one block in, we came to it. Or maybe we had slipped through some teleport into ancient Greece. Hard to say.
This place is a huge tourist destination and a favorite among locals, too, but I’ve been to SF many times and never even heard of it. So on one level, that was surprising. The next element of surprise was that the second I looked at those columns, I thought “Corinthian”. My key take-away from 6th grade was that there were three basic types of Greek columns. After graduating high school, I couldn’t locate all but a handfull of countries in Africa, but I knew the Greek columns hands down. Fail.
After discussing this topic, we inevitably moved on and did make it to see the Golden Gate Bridge just as the sun was setting. In another 2 hours we managed to walk all the way to the restaurant (The Slanted Door – delicious and can not be missed). For East Coasters, everything seems crazy far and I’m reminded of this awesome map which perfectly depicts our ignorance in a humorous way. Glad to see that LA is only an hour away from SF. Perhaps we’ll walk there tomorrow!
Just another 40 minutes of walking and we were back at the hotel. But its all ok, because we got to see this today:
Golden Gate > Any NYC Bridge
and yet you never owned sneakers until this year? that’s more exercise than I’ve gotten all year… including walking up 5 damn flights to get to your apartment!
Hhaha does this make you think I wore sneakers during this walk? Ballet flats, man 😉
Good website and especially enlightening. Thanks for taking the time to write it and post it!
Hi Irina,
Glad you like it and thanks for posting!