The hook
A thousand acres of made land, bigger than Central Park, holding the oldest Japanese garden in the country, a Victorian glass conservatory, and a paddock of bison.
01Why it's worth it
Golden Gate Park was planted on bare sand dunes in the 1870s and is now about 20 percent larger than Central Park, big enough that its best parts hide from each other. The Japanese Tea Garden, laid out for an 1894 world's fair, is the oldest public Japanese garden in the United States. The Conservatory of Flowers, a white filigree of wood and glass from 1879, is the oldest building in the park and the oldest public conservatory of its kind in North America. There's a herd of bison that's grazed here since 1891, a redwood-shaded AIDS memorial grove, fly-casting pools, a Dutch windmill, and the de Young and the Academy of Sciences facing each other across the Music Concourse. You could spend a day and miss half of it. The trick is to skip the parking hunt and pick two or three things far apart.
02How to experience it
The park runs from the Haight out to Ocean Beach. It's free, though the gardens and museums charge, and parking is a genuine pain, so come by transit or bike. The eastern end holds the museums and gardens, the western end the bison, the windmills, and the quiet. On Sundays much of JFK Drive closes to cars, which is the best time to have it.