San Francisco's Parks and other pockets of green provide countless opportunities for lounging, picnicking, and engaging in athletic pursuits ranging from Frisbee to fly-fishing and basketball to bocce. Moreover, many of the city's urban oases provide sweeping, dramatic vistas. Some of the following San Francisco parks are pocket-sized while others are enormous by any standard, but all are well worth a visit.

1. Golden Gate Park
Bordered by Fulton Street, Lincoln Way, Great Highway and Stanyan Street Rambling from the Upper Haight to the Pacific Ocean, the vast Golden Gate Park encompasses a whopping 1,017 acres – surpassing New York's Central Park in size by a good 174 acres. The miles of trails, 11 lakes, and scores of sports fields accommodate a wide spectrum of athletic interests, including running, biking, skating, horseback riding, baseball, basketball, kickball, polo, tennis, Frisbee, bocce ball, and fly-fishing. The park's eastern side hosts the highest concentration of attractions, including excellent museums and numerous special gardens and groves. The de Young museum is a striking presence, with a copper clad exterior designed to green to patina over time, and a 144-ft observation tower offering 360-degree views of the city. From the tower, look across the Music Concourse for a good view of the living roof atop the new California Academy of Sciences, scheduled to open in September 2008. Next to the de Young is the ever-popular Japanese Tea Garden, filled with carp ponds, cherry blossoms, and wooden bridges. Another major botanical attraction is the bright white and glass-domed Conservatory of Flowers, the oldest public conservatory in existence in North America, with nearly 2,000 plant species including orchids, carnivorous plants, and enormous water lilies. Elsewhere in the park you can sniff your way through the garden of fragrance in the Botanical Gardens at Strybing Arboretum, find plants mentioned in the Bard's plays in the peaceful Shakespeare's Garden of Flowers, or honor those whose lives have been affected by AIDS in the National AIDS Memorial Grove.

If basic lounging and relaxing is your mission, Hippie Hill is a good bet for enjoying impromptu music and roller-skating antics on the weekends. At Stow Lake – the largest of the park's eleven and hosting the park's highest promontory from Strawberry Hill in the center – you can rent rowboats or paddle boats and spend an afternoon floating around with the ducks. Also, keep your eyes peeled for statues – among others, the park is home to a likeness of former park superintendent John McLaren (who, ironically, hated statues) and a pedestal shared by Goethe and Schiller, which is one of four copies in the world of Ernst Rietschel’s famous original found in Weimar, Germany.

2. The Presidio
Bordered by Lyon Street and West Pacific Avenue
Beaches, cliffs, woods, historical sites, a golf course, cemetery, lake, and miles of trails and roads comprise this nearly 1,500-acre shoreline park in the northwest corner of San Francisco. Crissy Field – a restored tidal marshland along the northern waterfront – is a rare long and flat stretch in an otherwise hilly city, and thus a popular place for walkers, joggers, and bikers.

3. Lincoln Park
34th Avenue and Clement Street
The scenic trails leading along the windswept cliffs out to Land's End lookout offer priceless views of the Golden Gate Bridge on clear days. The main attractions in Lincoln Park are the Lincoln Park Golf Course, and the Palace of the Legion of Honor, which was built to commemorate California soldiers who died in World War I. This is one of the city's major fine arts museums, with an excellent collection of ancient and European art including over 80 Rodin sculptures.

4. Lafayette Park
Bordered by Laguna, Gough, Sacramento and Washington Streets
Topped with pine and eucalyptus trees, this four-block Pacific Heights perch offers sweeping city views that can most safely be enjoyed from the many green benches (beware of the grass since loads of dogs roam here). Distinguished mansions and apartment complexes surround the park, but one in particular to note is the imposing beaux arts Spreckels Mansion along the northern side of the park, which was built for Alma de Bretteville Spreckels and her sugar magnate husband Adolph Spreckels in 1913, and is now the private residence of romance novelist Daniele Steele.

5. Dolores Park
Bordered by Dolores, Church, 18th and 20th streets
As Brian Lillquist expertly delineated in Dolores Park: Land of Many Uses, Dolores Park attracts a rainbow of types, from drinking hipsters to far left protesters, hippie sport enthusiasts, gay sunbathers, little kiddies, serious athletes, and dog owners. Be sure to check out the view from the highest point, near the corner of 20th and Church streets.

6. Washington Square
Bordered by Union, Stockton, Filbert and Powell streets
Escape from North Beach's packed streets to this urban oasis overlooked by the soaring twin spires of the Romanesque Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church. Washington Square is a great spot to enjoy a picnic, but also offers prime people watching, with plenty of Frisbee throwers, elderly Chinese practicing Tai Chi, and everyone in between. San Francisco's oldest existing monument is also found here: a life-sized statue of Benjamin Franklin dating from 1879.

7. Huntington Park
Bordered by California, Sacramento, Taylor, and Cushman streets
Charming and very well maintained, this small, prettily landscaped patch of green on Nob Hill's crest is a perfect place to bring a book and cup of coffee, browse the occasional weekend art show, and to soak up sun and quintessential San Francisco ambiance. Wooden benches rim the grassy square and a center circle, children clamber on a small playground, and a handful of neighborhood pups and their owners are nearly always present. The gurgling fountain in the middle of the square is actually a replica of the Fontana della Tartarughe (Turtle Fountain) in Rome's Piazza Mattei, and on winter nights, the trees are festively decked with colorful lights. To the south, cable cars racket along California Street, while to the west stands the striking Gothic-style Grace Cathedral. On the park's east side is the one-time residence of James Cair Flood and the first brownstone built west of the Mississippi, and the Nob Hill mansion to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire.

8. Alamo Square
Bordered by Steiner, Hayes, Fulton, and Scott streets
If you come to Alamo Square, you may as well bring your camera and join the masses that have made "Postcard Row" one of the most photographed sites in San Francisco. Also known as the Painted Ladies, the six colorful Victorians form a picturesque site back-dropped by the distant Financial District skyline.

9. Ina Coolbrith Park
Vallejo Street between Mason and Taylor Streets
One of the least known and most unique parks in the city is Ina Coolbrith Park, named in honor of the city's first poet laureate who once mentored Jack London and also entertained writers at her home on nearby Macondray Lane (a street that later famous for inspiring Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City). A steep series of steps through pine trees, flowers, and cacti climb to narrow, bench-lined lookout ledges. The climb will leave you breathless but so will the panorama: North Beach, Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower, the Financial District and Transamerica Building, and the Bay Bridge.