Visit Golden Gate Park

Although confusingly this is not anywhere near the Golden Gate Bridge, it is one of the world’s great urban parks, far bigger than New York’s Central Park and the third most visited in the US. If you’re on foot, don’t miss the Japanese Tea Garden, the Oak Woodlands or the Bison Paddock, where a herd of the shaggy beasts was established in 1892 when the species was on the brink of extinction. The fine-art museum is top notch (deyoung.famsf.org) and at the California Academy of Sciences, you can visit the Shake House to experience the sustained tremors of San Francisco's two biggest earthquakes from inside the dining room of a Victorian-era house. Oh, and for the homesick Australian, the park has tens of thousands of eucalypts.

Location

Golden Gate Park and stretches from the Pacific Ocean Outer Sunset to north of Haight-Ashbury.