Sacramento Trip (Blog #7)

Thank you for visiting  and hopefully enjoying my latest blog. Today I am sharing some of the things my wife and I did and experienced when we recently visited California.

How do you condense a 3-week trip into a not-too-lengthy blog? I am not even going to attempt it, so here are some of my highlights.

For all but 3-nights my wife and I stayed with our British daughter and her Californian husband in their Midtown Sacramento apartment. We soon came to relise what a great tour guide our son-in-law is, and how enthusiastically they both showed us around and shared their local knowledge. This was a real bonus. which gave us an insider's giude to the best places to eat and grab a coffee. Local knowledge is invaluable wherever you visit.

Our hosts were working for the first week so my wife and I had to amuse ourselves. This wasn't our first trip to Sacramento; we'd been to and seen many of the more obvious tourist spots, but this time we wanted to dig deeper and also explore the places we hadn't already visited. We hit The Indian Museum near Sutter's Fort, The Capitol Museum, The Railway Museum and The History Museum (both in Sacramento Old Town), The Crocker Art Gallery, The California Musem, and the home of Leland Stanford, whose wealth founded Stanford University. We learnt a great deal about the history of California, sadly not all of it good, but which was nevertheless very interesting. A small piece of information we picked up is that a 'guide' in these places is referered to as a 'docent'. You learn something new every day. Many of the docents we spoke to were more than happy to tell us about their connections with England, either through relatives, sometimes quite distant, or through visiting the UK. Thankfully we weren't asked if we knew so-and-so who lived in London! We did, however, meet a chap who was from the same city as us, and a woman who had studied at Oxford University form where our daughter had also graduated. It's a very small world.

American food has a reputation for large servings and not being exactly haute cuisine. We soon also discovered that prices have risen, probably in line with those everywhere else. We ate out a great deal or had takeaway meals and sandwiches. We ate Mexican, Chinese, American (clam chowder, burgers, huge Club sandwiches), Oriental, and Italian. The food was all excellent and always more than plentiful.

The above image is obviously not of food, but is one of the many works of box art we saw whilst wandering around Sacramento. 

r second weekend was to be dedicated to watching The Super Bowl, which as we discovered is a national event, being not just a game of American Football, but an enterternment extraviganza, and a time to be with friends and share far-too-much food. The actual game lasted 4-hours, but there's the inevitable build up and post-game analyisis, not to mention the half-time entertainment by a heavily preganant Rhianna, and endless commercials. I am glad we expereinced the whole event. We enjoyed being with family to experience what is as special to Americans as the FA Cup Final and Grand National plus some all rolled into one.

I mentioned early that we stayed in Sacramanto for all but 3-nights. I will tell you where we travelled to in another blog.

Please feel free to comment on this blog.

Hope to see you again.

Mike.

©Mike Young 2023.