San Francisco Visitors Guide: Golden Gate Park and the Richmond District

Many visitors to Napa Valley combine their trip with a stay in San Francisco. To help you in planning your visit, we have included this San Francisco Visitors Guide.  After several days of visiting San Francisco, Golden Haven Hot Spring will be your perfect base for exploring the Napa Valley Wine Country.

A steamy, dreamy jungle of exotic trees, plants and flowers thrive in a monumental Victorian greenhouse shipped around Cape Horn from England in the 1870s. The Conservatory of Flowers is among the many historic attractions of Golden Gate Park, one of the world’s largest and most beautiful urban preserves. Built in 1871, it stretches nearly four miles to the sea in a wide swath of meadows, forests, gardens and lakes, incorporating such magical retreats as the oldest public Japanese garden in America, a fantasy when the cherry trees and azaleas bloom, or when red maples blaze against the red-painted pagodas in the fall.

Built in 1895, the Temple of Music is the site of free outdoor concerts and festivals, and “Opera in the Park” performances in the summertime. Gourmet food from the city’s top chefs, beer, wine and live music bring crowds for the annual “A La Carte A La Park” in Sharon Meadow in August. At the park’s western edge, within the terra cotta-tiled, Willis Polk-designed Beach Chalet is a museum of the park with vivid Depression-era murals and mosaics; and a brew pub and restaurant upstairs, with lovely views of the sea and Ocean Beach, a mile-long ribbon of sand.

The Coastal Trail is a breezy footpath tracing rugged cliffs from the Golden Gate Bridge through the Presidio and Sea Cliff, a tony residential enclave. The trail wanders through Lincoln Park to Land’s End, a picturesque promontory above the ruins of the Sutro Baths, nearby the historic, recently renovated Cliff House restaurant.

Within this greenbelt, bronze lions guard the Bronze lions guard the Palace of the Legion of Honor, which shelters 4,000 years of ancient and European art; El Grecos, Renoirs, Flemish tapestries and a roomful of Rodins are among the highlights.

Golfers brave winds off the ocean at Lincoln Park Golf Club, laid out in 1910 when surrounding Richmond District residents were trading in their horse-drawn carriages for Model Ts. Today, reflecting a large Asian and Pacific Islander population, a “New Chinatown” has emerged in the Richmond along Clement Street from Arguello to 25th Avenue. Glossy roasted ducks, ginseng, mangoes and star fruit are on sale in the groceries; old records, flowers and books in small shops. Family-owned restaurants may be Chinese or Japanese, Thai, Persian, Vietnamese or Burmese. Sweet Delite sells coconut and taro-flavored tea shakes with tapioca balls at the bottom that customers slurp up with a fat straw.

The article on this page is adapted from guidebooks written by Karen Misuraca, the author of Our San Francisco, Fun With the Family in Northern California, and other travel books. Available for purchase on Amazon.

Plan a Trip to Napa Valley from San Francisco