I'm Alexandra Kenin and I’m the founder of Urban Hiker. While living in New York in 2004, I took a vacation to San Francisco and realized I didn't want to come home.

It took three years, but I finally moved to San Francisco in 2007. When I bought my one-way ticket out west, my father bought me a copy of Adah Bakalinsky's Stairway Walks in San Francisco. At the time, I was a marketing manager at Google and would commute up to three hours a day. On weekends, inspired by the Stairway Walks book, I would take off to explore my new home on foot. One fateful day, a native San Franciscan friend brought me on a walk to the Embarcadero via the Vallejo and Filbert Street Steps. I loved the views from by the stairways, I loved the exercise I got from climbing them, and I loved how they seemed to be a secret to most. From that moment on, I was hooked on urban hiking.