Sunny California!

After our 6 hour-flight from New York, we finally touched down in sunny California. Our dear friend Valerie picked us up at the airport, and whisked us down to their house in Sausalito. Gilles, Valerie, Celian and Hector relocated from the sunny Cote d’Azur a last fall, and seem to be very much enjoying their life here in California. No wonder, considering where they live… Sausalito is a very nice little town indeed, stunningly located on the Bay of San Francisco. And the view from their flat towards the bay is pretty cool…

We started Friday by having a look around Sausalito. One of the cool places to see there is the Bay Model. It’s basically a miniature layout, showing the bay of San Francisco, and the surrounding water system. It was built by the US Army for simulating the effects of tides and other natural phenomena on the San Francisco Bay area, and was also used to simulate the effects of civil engineering projects etc. It’s quite a fascinating place to visit…



Apart from that, Sausalito is known mostly for its seafront, and its “hippie boats”. Apparently, Sausalito was popular with the hippies in the 60s, when they lived here on their boats. Well, the boats are still there, moored in the harbor, and have become a bit of a tourist attraction. As for the hippies, well, apparently most of them work in the financial district these days…

After our tour of Sausalito, we decided to take the ferry down to San Francisco. It’s a very nice little trip indeed, going past Golden Gate, Alcatraz, before finally pulling up at the Ferry Building. Once there, we walked up Market Street, and from there up to North Beach and Chinatown. We even had time for a cup of coffee in a real North Beach institution, the Caffe Trieste (this was were the beatniks used to philosophize about life in the 60’s…). Then, ‘twas time to catch the ferry back to Sausalito.

The next day, we all got into Valeries big Chrysler, and drove down to the capital of California, Sacramento. Sacramento is in the heart of gold rush country - and it was during those crazy years that Sacramento was founded. We headed straight to the old town, the main reason to visit the city. It’s quite a likeable little place, the place had managed to preserve its historic buildings, quite unusual for the United States. It is, unsurprisingly a rather tacky and touristy place, but I still liked it.


After a rather disappointing lunch, we visited the railroad museum, which is a pretty cool place, actually. There are plenty of old steam engines to check out, as well as some rather interesting exhibits relating to the history of the railroads in the US of A.

On the way back to San Francisco, we stopped by at a rather interesting place called Locke. It is basically a little Chinese village in the middle of nowhere. It’s the sort of odd-ball place that’s almost too improbable to exist – thankfully it does. These days, it’s inhabited by hippies, artists and I guess some Chinese as well, still… We found a really cool bar there called “Al the Wop”. Al (who was, I guess, Italian) was apparently the first non-Chinese person to open up a business in Locke. The place must be one of the coolest bars I’ve been to in the US, with plenty of odd-ball memorabilia, dollar notes stuck to the ceiling, and an interesting mixture of clients.

On Sunday, we decided to do a bit of local tourism. We started off with a visit to Muir woods, which is I guess the most “local” national park for inhabitants of San Francisco. The main attraction of the park are the coastal redwoods, which are part of the sequoia family. These giant trees can grow up to a height of 115 meters. They sure are impressive. We spent a very interesting couple of hours in Muir woods, being guided by an elderly volunteer who knew rather a lot indeed about the old trees of Muir woods…


After our brief forest outing, it was time to head to the beach. We ended up in Stinton beach, a nice little place just north of the San Francisco Bay. After a nice and filling lunch in one of the cozy eateries by the road, we headed down to the beach. In spite of the rather chilly water temperature, I had a dip in the sea, brr….

On Monday, Gilles and Valerie had to get back to work, so me and Mathilde decided to rent a car and do some exploration on our own… After picking up the car at the airport, we headed south of San Francisco, though the Silicon Valley and on towards Monterey. Monterey is, by American standards, quite a historic city, dating back all the way to 1770 (Monterey was the capital of California until 1846). We started our visit by checking out Cannery Row, made famous by John Steinbeck (a local resident). I have to say, it was rather disappointing – there is basically nothing to see at Cannery Row other than the famous aquarium of Monterey (not sure what I was expecting, really, Cannery Row was the site of some sardine canning factories).

We were more impressed with the rugged coastline just outside Monterey, but didn’t linger, since we were very keen to head towards the Big Sur. The Big Sur is a stretch of coastline stretching towards the south from Monterey, made famous by several authors. Unfortunately, our exploration was rather seriously disrupted by the notorious Californian fog, which swept in, and basically ruined the view for us. But I must say, the little we saw of the coastline looked very spectacular indeed…

On the way back, we stopped again in Monterey and had a walk around downtown. It’s quite a pleasant little town to stroll about, and they have a historic walk you can follow. By European standards, Monterey isn’t perhaps that “historic”, but it was an interesting walk nonetheless. We also checked out the Fisherman’s wharf, which is basically an equally tacky bus slightly smaller version of the one in San Francisco…


All in all, a very interesting little roadtrip!