San Francisco is expensive in the way cities become expensive when everyone wants to live in them. Coffee costs what you’d expect when real estate has priced out every business without a loyal following. Parking is the kind of expense that alters your feelings about a place. But the city sits on hills that face a bay on three sides and the Pacific on the fourth, and most of that geography is available to anyone who shows up in reasonable shoes. I’ve spent some of the better afternoons of my traveling life in San Francisco without spending much at all.
Golden Gate Park Takes Half a Day
The park is 1,017 acres, three miles long and half a mile wide, larger than Central Park in New York. Free to enter from any direction at any hour. Inside: the Bison Paddock (actual bison, with a pasture, inexplicably occupying the western end of a major city), Stow Lake with its waterfall and rental rowboats if you want them, the Dutch Windmill in the northwest corner, and miles of paths that most visitors never reach.
The Botanical Garden is free on weekday mornings for everyone; weekends charge non-residents a modest fee. The Japanese Tea Garden charges around $12, skip it and spend the time walking deeper into the western end of the park instead. The Conservatory of Flowers at the east end has a fee for the greenhouse itself, but the surrounding garden beds and the Victorian exterior are free and worth seeing.
The Bridge Is Better on Foot
Walking the Golden Gate Bridge is free. Driving it costs a toll. The pedestrian path is 1.7 miles from the toll plaza to the Marin side, about 20 to 30 minutes each way. Most visitors photograph the bridge from a viewpoint and move on, which is a reasonable use of ten minutes. The experience of being on it, with the bay traffic below, the city receding behind you, and the Pacific opening ahead, is different from watching it from land.
The Marin Headlands on the far side are free to explore — the whole area is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service. If you’re planning other national park visits, check the national park free entrance days across the country. Battery Spencer, accessible by car from the Marin side, gives the single best elevated view of the bridge against the downtown skyline. The headlands trails are free, well-maintained, and significantly less crowded than anything on the San Francisco side.
Free Museum Days Worth Planning Around
The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park are both free on the first Tuesday of each month. These are legitimate collections: the de Young covers American art from colonial times through contemporary; the Legion of Honor holds European paintings and one of the better Rodin collections in the United States. First Tuesdays fill up, so arrive when they open.
SFMOMA is free on first Thursday evenings and always free for visitors under 18. For families, that combination covers two major museums at no cost. The California Academy of Sciences is free for San Francisco residents with ID, worth knowing if you’re local or staying with someone who is.
The Mission District on Foot
Clarion Alley, between 17th and 18th Streets, has 30 or 40 murals covering both walls for a full block. Some of the best public art in the city, free to walk through anytime. Balmy Alley off 25th Street is the older, more famous mural alley, with work going back to the 1970s alongside newer pieces. Neither requires a map or a guide.
Dolores Park runs along Dolores Street and offers unobstructed views of downtown and the bay from its upper slopes that rival any paid observation deck. On a clear afternoon the Bay Bridge and the East Bay hills are visible from a park bench. The park is free and busy on weekends, quieter on weekday mornings.
The Ferry Building and the Waterfront
The Ferry Building Marketplace is free to walk through, free to sample from vendors who are genuinely enthusiastic about what they’re selling, and has one of the better Saturday farmers markets in the state. The building’s long hall opens toward the bay, and the views across the water to Marin are worth the walk on their own.
The Embarcadero path connects the Ferry Building south to the Bay Bridge and north toward Fisherman’s Wharf, covering most of what people mean when they want to see the waterfront. Fisherman’s Wharf is worth the walk once: Pier 39 has sea lions who’ve claimed the docks permanently and seem unbothered by the crowds. The restaurants there are priced for people who just arrived and haven’t found anything else yet.
Lands End and Sutro Baths
At the western edge of the city, the ruins of the Sutro Baths sit above the ocean on a rocky point. Built in 1896 as the world’s largest indoor swimming complex, they burned in 1966 and what remains is a series of open concrete pools that fill with seawater at high tide. Free to walk through, evocative in a way that’s hard to describe without standing in them.
The Lands End coastal trail connects the Baths to the Legion of Honor through a wooded path with intermittent ocean views. Free parking at the Sutro Baths visitor center. The trail takes about 45 minutes one way at a moderate pace and is consistently one of the better free hours in the city.
San Francisco doesn’t particularly need your money to show you what it is. The hills and the bay and the fog coming in over the bridge do their work regardless. The most San Francisco things about San Francisco are the ones that cost nothing to be present for.
For the federally managed free spaces inside San Francisco, see the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (NPS).
