If you love walking, you'll find nirvana in the San Francisco Bay Area - from great flat walks to steep hills, hidden stairways, guided walking tours and quiet shorelines - or even racewalking competitions.
We even take businesses out for walks. Our goal is to create a walking revolution by encouraging people to walk, where possible, instead of driving or sitting.
LET'S COMPILE A LIST OF THE BEST WALKS
Please post your favorite walks in comments to make them accessible to all. Here are a few favorites you can start with:
San Francisco
Moraga Steps.
Gorgeous stairway of mosaic art that leads to a spectacular view of the city, the ocean and bay.
Coit Tower has free (and paid guided) walking tours of Diego Rivera murals, created during the WPA era. This link has maps of how to walk to Coit Tower yourself along my favorite path - the Filbert Steps.
The San Francisco Library sponsors free guided walks
East Bay
Oakland
The Oakland Walking Tours lead guided tours through the city every Saturday and Wednesday between May and October.
Oaklanders treat the lovely Lake Merritt as their own backyard. The 3.1 mile walk passes the nation's first bird refuge, a sometimes-cormorant and sometimes-heron rookery on the 5 man-made "Bird Islands", a beautiful botanic and Japanese Bonsai garden, a necklace of lights, Children's Fairyland, gondola rides, boating rentals (skulling, kayak, etc.) and a thriving park often filled with top level entertainment.
The Alameda Lagoons walk is the perfect bucolic, after-work relaxing stroll with a combo ocean/lagoon view. The path leads along the ocean for half the walk with views of the port of Oakland and San Francisco, and then into the island's interior heron & duck filled lagoons down the other side of this walk. I estimate it's around 4.3 miles total but haven't measured it myself.
If you have an accurate step measure, pls. post the correct total length of all connected lagoons so we know!
WHERE ARE YOUR FAVORITE WALKS? Please share in comments below!
