We Visit San Francisco: Seeing Other Places

We didn’t spend all of our time in San Francisco while we were visiting. Most of it, to be sure, and that’s appropriate since that’s where Geoff and Dave are and it’s a great place to visit, but not all of it. We did go further afield. And after a certain amount of time we left to go home, since we had airline tickets and needed to get back to our regularly scheduled lives, already in progress. That’s how these trips work, after all.

On the day after the Cheese Party we went to Benicia.

Both Geoff and Dave have vehicles, which is somewhat unusual in a city where parking spaces are harder to find than apartments. It is a very handy thing for such tasks as getting people to and from airports, though, as well as for going on day trips. We couldn’t fit the six of us into one vehicle as it turned out, so I went with Dave and everyone else piled in with Geoff. They took off fairly quickly while Dave and I followed at a leisurely pace, listening to jazz while crossing the new Bay Bridge which is a really lovely structure and cleverly lit.

Naturally Dave and I got there first.

We parked at the designated meeting point – a grocery store which had a coffeeshop inside of it – and went in to get warm beverages before heading across the street to a little park where we sat at one of the picnic tables and waited for the others to arrive. It was a bright sunny day and fairly warm by Wisconsin January standards (not sure about San Francisco January standards) and we enjoyed it.

Once the crew reassembled we headed off into Benicia itself. We walked past the big church, which – it being Sunday morning – was actively being used for services so we didn’t feel it would be appropriate to go inside and gawp like the tourists we were, though apparently it is quite a sight inside. It was built from the hull of an old ship and this is supposed to be very clear when you look at it from the interior. Perhaps next time, though.

Our first actual goal was to find lunch, which we did at a place that was a combination of bakery, sandwich shop, and general attraction. They make their own everything there, and it was warm enough for us to sit outside – a handy thing, since that’s pretty much where the only open seats were.

From there we wandered through the town. Benicia was founded in the 1840s, right around the time that the US was forcibly removing the top third of Mexico and incorporating it as the American southwest, and it served as the capital of California for a brief period in the 1850s. It’s a pretty town, with a fairly active main street that seems to have an unusual concentration of dentists from what I could tell but it was a lovely place to walk around.

The first place we stopped to explore was the old state capitol. It’s a two-story brick building with a bored and friendly NPS staffer at the front door who was quite happy to see us and let us know all about the place. He asked if we were interested in the tour, which we declined on the grounds that it would be more time than we wanted to spend, but he said if we wanted a quick peek inside he’d let us do that. We were on our honor that if we stayed too long we’d sign up for the tour so we were just in and out, but it was a really nice site and if we get back there we will definitely sign up.

We continued on through some of the residential areas, and eventually made our way to the waterfront.

Benicia sits on an inlet that comes off the north end of San Francisco Bay (though it’s called San Pablo Bay at that point for reasons that probably made sense at the time) and you can just wander along the shoreline taking in the views. There are even benches there for just this purpose. It’s kind of quiet, but very nice.

Eventually we made our way back to the grocery store and headed off to Berkeley to visit Cracker.

I’m not really sure how she acquired that nickname, but that’s how she introduced herself to me when we met a decade ago so that’s what I call her. She comes from an Old California family and we met her at the house her grandparents built in Berkeley a hundred years ago almost to the day, not long after the big fire that wiped out a good chunk of the town. It’s a neat old house with vivid 1920s vibes to it – white plaster walls, rounded doorways, brown wood trim. I love that style. Mostly we just hung out and talked about whatever came to mind, but eventually we got hungry and got takeout for dinner. All in all a lovely way to end a good day.

The next day we had to fly home, but there was still one item on Lauren’s to do list for this trip so we stopped at an In-N-Out for burgers on the way to the airport. It was tasty, but I have to say that Culvers is better. This might be because I made the rookie mistake of ordering from the menu and I later found out that they only really have a menu for people who aren’t familiar with the place – you’re supposed to order other things and other styles and there are entire websites dedicated to telling you what these are. This strikes me as a bit more complicated than it needs to be, but so it goes. Next time I’ll know better.

We got to the airport in good time and headed off toward our gate, which of course requires passing through the many-layered security process that is the standard experience for air travel these days. I made it all the way to the Full Body Scanner before realizing that I’d forgotten my phone in my pocket. This meant two things: one, I had to make a mad dash to the Stuff Scanner to put my phone in my little bin, which fortunately had not yet been ingested into the scanner. And two, it meant I ended up with the full “You Should Buy Me Dinner First” pat down that they give to miscreants who forget their phones in their pockets. Fortunately the only threat I pose to airport security is that I might trip over someone, so it all went well.

One of the things that Kim was looking forward to in the airport was the Coffee Robot, and it turned out that not only was there one right by our gate but also we were there in plenty of time to make use of it. So she and Lauren went over and were suitably entertained by our future Robot Overlord. It was pretty good coffee, from what they said.

The flight home was marvelously uneventful, and this trip was with an airline that allowed us to have carry-ons so we had some extra space for things. Finding the parking shuttle at O’Hare was a bit of a challenge but eventually we were safely in our car and hurtling up the highway, racing the snowstorm toward Wisconsin. It was still dry when we got home, and Grandpa quickly whisked Grandma off to continue the race up to their house – successfully, as it turned out. And the next morning we woke up to three inches of slush on the ground, which is how we really knew we were back in Wisconsin after all.

Happy travels, all around.