Welcome to the 2017 version of the website for urban walks in the San Francisco Bay Area! The walks take several days beginning right outside your door. You can drop the jetlag, reduce the carbon footprint, and have instant gratification by exercising the legs nature gave you and be able to enjoy the beautiful sights and sounds of the Bay Area al fresco.
You will save money—-instead of buying expensive tickets to Europe or Asia for vacations, you can enjoy a guilt-free locavore’s holiday with fine food and luxurious hotels for the money. And as a spinoff, you’ll gain lots of personal pride in achieving your walking goals each day and revel in total glory at the end of the week.
Typically the walks entail an early start by 8am, with 8-10 miles a day of walking for a total of 4-5 hours (including stops along the way). Once you reach your hotel destination, you have the rest of the day at the hotel’s poolside or spa or can take a well-deserved nap! You can order “in” for dinner or venture to a nearby restaurant to taste the local fare.
Some planning in advance is required, and the more you do, the more it will pay off. You can use your Iphone or mobile device to search out each day’s route via Google maps using the human icon for “walk” function. Plan each day’s walk by plotting out how to get from hotel to hotel. When you are actually walking, use the blue dot function to track your location. Occasionally you will get lost, but as long as you have internet access you should be able to easily find your way back to your chosen route.
The tabs at the top indicate the journeys we have taken:
1. San Francisco to San Jose (East Bay Route)
2. San Jose to San Francisco (Peninsula Route)
3. San Francisco to Napa
Naturally you can do any of the trips in reverse order, but the posted segments are shown only in one direction. You can plot and print out a similar version for any reverse trip. In any event, printing out the directions using your own computer or mobile devices are recommended, rather than relying on these printouts. They are provided as sample data for you to use as a reference guide for printing your own. I also recommend that you click on each image so you can read them in detail easily and to get a sense of the main roads, monuments or events designated along the way. They will help you to avoid getting lost or disoriented. You can modify routes as you see fit or choose parallel streets that may be quieter or more interesting.
While these urban walking instructions are intended to serve as a guide, it is by no means complete. The information is intended to give you a comprehensive understanding of what is involved in a week-long walking adventure through the Bay Area’s most populated areas without having to drive through them. Walking will give you a vivid memory of each community and put each in order and context within the string of cities that connect the route. They won’t become a blur as they do when you fly through them on the freeway in a car.
By doing so, we hope you will gain an intimate understanding of the beautiful, interesting, and even neglected districts of the Bay Area. Like us, you will relish and remember each city when they are mentioned and recall how exciting it was to experience each one. You will witness first hand the vibrant natural and built environments, where people work and live, and their daily activities that make the Bay Area so unique and special.
Walkers Enjoying a Break along the SF-East Bay Route to San Jose
