Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We get the greyhound up to Sacramento which to be honest is a place we don't really know too much about but thought we would check out anyway.
Were staying in a Hostelling International hostel for one night then staying with a coach surfer for 2 nights.
We arrive at the hostel to find out that it is a huge Victorian mansion that has been saved from demolition and converted into a hostel. The place is absolutely huge and is still all decked out in Victorian furniture, it's great. We arrived quite late in the afternoon so don't really have much time in the day to explore but we do venture out for a bit. Our hostel is in a great location, right in the middle of downtown so we are close to everything. We walk over to a shopping mall that is close to us and have a look around to see what there is and if we can get anything to eat. After looking around for a while we go back out and just aimlessly walk around just checking out the place. That night we found a micro brewery and sat in there for ages trying different beers that they make on site.
Next day we head out to a farmers Market to get some fruit, we have found out that a lot of the fruit is grown in California so it is proper fresh and good. We are meeting our coach surfer at the hostel so head back to check out and get picked up. Were staying with a girl called Cherie for the next couple of nights, she seemed quite nice and Jodie and her hit it off instantly. Cherie takes us back to her place to get cleaned up and then takes us down to the Capitol building to have a look around it. We didn't realise that Sacramento was the capital of California but this is where they decide all the laws and that for the state. The Capitol building is quite nice, most of it is open to the public so we got to have a look round all the rooms they use to decide laws and vote. The best bit about it though was that we got to see Arnold Schwarzenegger's office, couldn't get in there though, the armed guard put a stop to that!
After we finished in the Capital building Cherie took us down to the old side of Sacramento. Sacramento became big when the gold rush hit so they have left a bit of the city the way it was from back in those days. It's well cool, all the buildings are wooden, they have old school boats and trains and even some of the pavements are still wooden. It's like something out of a wild western film. When we got back to the car Cherie had got a parking ticket, whoops!!
We then went down to a bar that is right on a small pier over the Sacramento river. The bar was well cool, proper secluded and not touristy at all so the beers were quite cheap!
Cherie had a few work things to do the next day so she dropped us off the oldest building in Sacramento which was a ranch back in the day. There really wasn't anything special about it so we just walked back to US Capitol and stopped off at a few places on the way. A couple of hours later Cherie picked us up and took us to a sushi restaurant. Food was well nice but i'm still an amateur with the chopsticks so took an age to eat the damn rice!
Cherie told us that she had to go to San Francisco tonight for a concert so we were welcome to stay at her house without her there so we headed back to hers after dinner so she could pack and so that we could book somewhere to go next. The main problem we have found with the West coast is that there is no public transport what so ever. A lot of the places like we want to go to like Santa Barbara, Santa Monica etc you need a car to get to and there is hardly any hostels or Couchsurfers to stay with so I think we may struggle for places to go on this side.
We did get in touch with a Couchsurfer in Santa Cruz but he could only have us if we put our dates back a day so Cherie was kind enough to let us stay an extra night in her house while she was away.
As Cherie was heading to San Francisco she dropped us at another micro brewery, which apparently are quite famous in Sacramento. We then headed to an outdoor concert that they have every Friday. No idea who the band were but they were quite good and quite famous in California.
As Sacramento is a small place we had pretty much seen everything here, the only thing we hadn't fully looked around was more Government buildings and we weren't really interested in these. We spent our extra day lounging around the house and just watching films. I looked into where I wanted to go while Jodie was back at home, I tried to get up to Alaska or the Bahamas but it was going to cost me loads to do the things I wanted so I settled for Seattle and Vancouver.
Sacramento has been good, not loads here but we've made a good friend (especially Jodie!) and have enjoyed trying all there beers (Monkey Knife Fight was by far the best!). Were heading to Santa Cruz tomorrow to stay with a lad for a couple of nights so hopefully that should be good.
- comments