Things To Do with Only One Day in San Francisco

The Itinerary

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre
Golden Gate Bridge
Baker Beach
Japanese Tea Garden
Golden Gate Park
Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden

What can you do if you only have one day in beautiful San Francisco?

Luckily I have a friend who is a native to show me around.
Our adventures started bright and early around 7 am and we drove an hour from Sacramento to San Francisco. The drive through the valleys to San Fran was gorgeous. We ended up at Golden Gate bridge bright and early in the morning and got some get views.

Palace of Fine Arts Theatre

3601 Lyon St, San Francisco, CA 94123

This location is so lovely it’s great for photography and I even witnessed a few wedding photography sessions and a quinceanera photos session. The park that the dome is located in is a great whimsical photoaged session, I highly suggest a big beautiful dress and to shoot at an angle to capture all the beauty of the architect and the person.

Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA

I think everyone should see the Golden Gate Bridge at least once since it’s so beautiful and massive. Taking pictures here was so lovely there is a great view with cute sightseeing attractions.

Baker Beach

Bowley St and Gibson Rd
San Francisco, CA 94129

Since I traveled here during March this beach was extremely cold and I had no idea it was going to be freezing cold and the wind was hitting. But wow the view was so lovely you can see the Golden Gate Bridge from this beach. There is a trail leading off the beach towards to bridge.

Japanese Tea Garden

75 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, San Francisco, CA 94118
Tickets- $12 for non California residents and $7 for California residents

This lovely Japanese Tea Garden is located in Golden Gate Park so parking is quite scarce, I highly suggest going super early in the morning to secure street parking. While waiting for the garden to open you will be able to explore the massive Gold Gate Park. I was not able to see the entire park while I was there but you can definitely spend an entire day there and not get bored. Lucky for us we can during spring so a lot of the flowers in the garden were bloomed but I highly suggest doing this park deeper into mid-spring so that almost all the plants are fully bloomed. We tried to visit the neighboring rose garden but unfortunately, none of the roses had blossomed so it looked pretty dead.

Golden Gate Park

501 Stanyan St
San Francisco, CA 94117
Fell St & Hayes St

The common denominator is Golden Gate Park, it holds all the sites I list or they are located only a few miles away. We parked a little farther away from the park just to get parking and this park is massive we did not even get to see 25% off it. When I do go back to visit I would love to completely experience this park. It holds the Ferris wheel, the Japanese Tea Garden, Botanical Garden, Rose garden, and a ton of other exciting sites like an aquarium.

Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden

1690 John F Kennedy Dr, San Francisco, CA 94121

I was really excited for this one but they were a bunch of other people and the windmill was absolutely packed. The tulips had blossomed and it was utterly adorable and such a beautiful experience. I highly suggest if your shooting here to do it on an over casted day to be able to capture the Windmill’s height and depth.