California - San Francisco Bay Area

Golden Gate Park

A Karen Brown Recommendation

Golden Gate Park: You will need to take a bus or taxi to Golden Gate Park, but don’t miss it. Amazingly, the park is mostly re-claimed sand dunes, which now is home to a myriad of vegetation. The park encompasses over 1,000 acres, so large you really cannot hope to see it all, but many attractions are located near one another. Wander through the traditional Japanese Tea Garden and enjoy tea and cookies Japanese-style at the tea house (415-752-1171). Across the road from the Japanese Tea Garden, the Arboretum features landscaped gardens of many countries and regions including their indigenous plants and flowers. Art lovers head for the adjacent De Young Museum whose copper cover roof rises above the trees. It’s modern architecture is as impressive as its splendid collection of paintings by American artists and art of the native Americas, Africa, and the Pacific (415-863-3330). Off John F. Kennedy Drive, you can also visit the Rose Garden with hundreds of species of roses in every color and where, for the price of an almond, you'll have bluebirds eating our of your hand. A little further east and open year round is the beautifully renovated Conservatory of Flowers housing many tropical flowers including a gorgeous lily pond. The 12,000 square-foot Victorian greenhouse is the oldest existing glass and wood conservatory in the United States. If you are hungry, you might want to consider the Beach Chalet, a restaurant on the ocean side of the park near the Dutch Windmill. The menu offers good, modern American fare matched with their list of brewery selections. The building once served as the changing rooms for Ocean Beach. On the first floor are beautifully restored murals of San Francisco in its early days and guests enjoy unobstructed views of the surf from tables by the second-floor expanse of window. (415-386-8439)

Located along this Karen Brown Itinerary:

San Francisco to Los Angeles Via the Coast

Traveler Reviews:
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Nearby Hotels and Bed & Breakfasts:
Listed Alphabetically, Not By Distance.

• Gerstle Park Inn
• Olema Druids Hall
• Beach House Hotel
• The Inn Above Tide
• Old Thyme Inn
• Petite Auberge
• Hotel Sausalito
• Seal Cove Inn
• Union Street Inn
• Washington Square Inn
• White Swan Inn