Lands End is where the city falls into the ocean, and it's the most dramatic mile of coast inside any American city — a drowned coastline of shipwrecks, ruins, and cliff trail with the Golden Gate at the end of it. Just under five kilometres, best in the afternoon when the light comes off the water.
Start high at the Legion of Honor, the white palace on the bluff with its Rodins and its free Thinker, then drop through the cypress to the Coastal Trail along the old railroad bed — the line that used to run passengers out here before the cliffs took it. The bridge plays peekaboo through the trees the whole way. Detour to the stone labyrinth on its point if the mood takes you.
The trail brings you down to the Sutro Baths, the concrete skeleton of a glass-roofed bathhouse that burned in 1966, now flooded and booming with the swell in its sea cave. Above sit the Cliff House and the haunted garden of Sutro Heights. End at Point Lobos over Seal Rocks, and the 38-Geary runs you the length of the city home.
