City Walks: San Francisco: 50 Adventures on Foot [Cards]

Christina Henry de Tessan (Author)

Book Description

Series: City Walks | Publication Date: December 30, 2004

Ditch the usual tourist traps and see the City by the Bay on foot! City Walks: San Francisco will give you an insider's experience of this breathtaking (and walkable) city. Each card in this deck offers a self-guided walking tour, complete with detailed map and local secrets. Discover where San Franciscans eat, drink, rest, walk, and play. Pick any card and conquer the hills of San Francisco!

Product Details

• Cards: 1 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (December 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081184563X
• ISBN-13: 978-0811845632
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 4.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #536,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful BUT no info on Distance, October 15, 2005

By 

Elizabeth (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City Walks: San Francisco: 50 Adventures on Foot (Cards)

I was born and raised in San Francisco and I am delighted and impressed with my recent purchase of the City Walk series for SF, however there is one major drawback. There is no way to judge the length of the walk. Not only is there no mention of distance, but the maps of the walks are not consistently to scale. Meaning the maps simply show the rout as it will fit on the card so an inch can be a block or a quarter of a mile and this is NOT indicated on the card.

In addition, the walks vary greatly in distance, some only a few blocks and some over 4 miles. This can be misleading if you were to try one walk and then another with out knowing and not preparing for a much longer walk. Also, I wanted to use the walks to "spice up" my exercise routine, it would be great to know how many miles to track my progress.

If you are planning on using this as a tourist guide as a new visitor there is some great information, including parking and bus information to the walks. However, just keep in mind the distance is in no way indicated on the map or under the difficulty rating. For example, two walks are rated "steep" one includes a steep street about a block long, another is a few miles trek up a very steep mountain.

If I was not familiar with the area I would never have known this until I set out for a walk and perhaps found it too long to manage. I only know the distance differences because I know the streets and trails referred to in this "book" (which is really a set of 50 cards with a map on one side and descriptions of the walks on the other.)

Pros:

- Good representation of SF culture and beauty
- Detailed points of interest information
- interestingly organized walks
- bus and parking information to and from walks
- easy to read maps
- information on steepness/ difficulty of walk


Cons:

- does not provide information on distance of walk
- walks vary greatly in length
- maps not drawn to scale to reflect length of walk

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scale Issue, November 22, 2005

By 

Robert - See all my reviews

This review is from: City Walks: San Francisco: 50 Adventures on Foot (Cards)

Though there is no scale bar on the maps themselves, these decks come with an info card that explains that these maps ARE drawn to scale. Most cards are drawn at a scale where one inch equals a 1000 feet, and a few marked with white borders have scales where one inch equals 2600 feet.

This info is easy to miss if you don't read the explanatory card, but these maps are definitely easy to use once you have. Plus they are cute.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really smart idea - I wish I had designed it myself, October 5, 2005

By 

Dom Miliano (Denville, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: City Walks: San Francisco: 50 Adventures on Foot (Cards)

My 2 favorite American cities are NYC and San Francisco. I used to spend a lot of time doing projects in California and spent every free hour in the City by the Bay. Since I have the NYC cards and love them, I figured I would buy these and have them for my next trip. A friend borrowed my set for a recent trip and told me that he followed several cards and found them a great travelling companion. In fact, he said he followed a card to the "best view in the City." Can't get much better than that.