We call it Sac (apparently): Sacramento, Day 1 (13 July 2017)

After multiple visits to California, the first for me in 1983, and for Len a decade before that, we finally visit its capital, Sacramento. While researching a restaurant (of all things), I came across a quote that I can’t resist sharing:

It’s a story as old as time, or as Sacramento, which has been the California city you marry rather than the one you date since Los Angeles had orange trees downtown and San Francisco was the Barbary Coast.

As you read (perhaps) in yesterday’s post, we arrived by train at the reasonable hour of 9.15am, and proceeded straight to Old Sacramento which is a few minutes walk from the train station. Much was still closed – except for the Old Sacramento Visitor Centre, with its very positive, cheery officer who informed us that the Visitor Centre only existed for us so if we got hot during the day we were to come on in and rest in their two seats. (They wouldn’t want to have too many hot people at once!).

Although most places were closed, our Visitor Centre guy did point us to a cafe two shops down, so that – Ten – was our first stop. And it was good (or, good enough anyhow. I rarely get the coffee I like here, but we Aussies are coffee snobs. Mostly I choose Iced Tea which is common here, which you don’t get much in Australia except for the bottled stuff, and which I like! Len, who likes his coffee white, is a bit less fussy than I am, and has more options in cafes, wicked ones like Iced Coffee and Hot Chocolate).

First meal in the USA’s Farm-to-Fork capital

We then Uber-ed (is that a verb?) to our apartment, which wasn’t ready but we had prearranged dropping off our bags, before walking to a nearby eatery for lunch, Jack’s Urban Eats (a “chill counter-serve chain”). This is probably not (ha) farm-to-fork eating, but it was handy on a very hot day (37°C maximum) and we both had very tasty (and huge) salads, Len’s a Santa Fe Chicken and mine a Thai Salmon.

First sight-seeing in California’s capital

Our focus for the afternoon, we decided, would be the state Capitol, but we ended up visiting three of the city’s “sights”.

Capitol Park

As its name suggests, this Park surrounds the State Capitol. It’s a beautiful park, with hundreds of mature trees all labelled as in an arboretum – all sorts of cedars, magnolias, oaks, and so on. Even a eucalyptus regnans (Mountain Ash). Wikipedia says that there are around 1140 trees in the park (excluding shrubs), representing over 200 types of trees,

There’s also a large rose garden, for Peace. It was of course in full flower right now. And there are several memorials, though the only one I stopped at was for the Sisters of Mercy, a religious order which arrived in Sacramento in 1857 to care for the children of miners, as well as for the sick and homeless.

We saw a few critters too, squirrels and two mounted police. That was a surprise.

State Capitol

With inside attractions being the preferred order of the day, our next stop was the State Capitol, where we signed up for a tour, and then wandered around a little before the tour started, running into one of California’s favourite sons, Ronald Regan.

Then the tour started, and we greatly enjoyed it. The tour guide gave us the “early history” of Sacramento (but didn’t mention the Native Americans, which was interesting to us Aussies as it would not be done anymore in Australia not to mention our first peoples). She explained Sacramento’s origins as a gold city, and gave us significant dates:

• 1847: Sutter started the agricultural industry in the area with 2,000 fruit trees
• 1848: Gold was found; and California (along with several other southwest states) separates from Mexico
• 1849: the Gold Rush began
• 1850: California became the 30th state of the Union
• 1860: ground was broken for Sacramento’s Capitol building (after the capital had moved around four cities in the state over the previous decade).

As we toured the building – including the Lower and Upper Houses – our guide pointed out which items were still original to the (neoclassical) building, which was completed in 1874. 

We also saw some of the portraits of the state’s governors, including of course Regan and Schwarzenegger. She particularly discussed the portrait for the current governor, Edmund (aka Jerry) Brown. He was also governor from 1975 to 1983, and the portrait relates to this first term. It is controversial because it is not the traditional formal portrait (as you will see in our pics.) Painted by Don Bachardy, it is more “abstract” to convey, our guide said, the “wear and tear” of the job. There are blood and bruises on Brown’s face, and his suit is torn at the shoulder. It’s an intense, arresting portrait.

It was a nicely informative tour, of just the length (about an hour) for our feet and concentrations!

Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament

Our final site was a church which our Visit Centre guy said made you “think of Europe”. Well it is big and colourful in that traditional way, but if you’ve seen the big European churches you can quickly see the difference. It is an important building though. Wikipedia says that, with its construction dating from 1887 on, it is an example of “the strength and history in Sacramento’s architecture” because, as many of its buildings date back to the mid-19th century, it contains the largest concentration of buildings dating back to that era in the United States.

It is an attractive, and clearly loved, building, inside and out. (Its style is Italian Renaissance outside, and Victorian, within, apparently.)

Finer dining

For dinner, we chose a restaurant in the neighbourhood – i.e., that we could walk to – and that sounded like it might represent Sacramento’s food culture, Waterboy restaurant, which is over 20 years old. We enjoyed a delicious meal – sharing a beet and goat’s cheese salad to start, then a pan-fried chicken dish for me and a bavette (or flank steak) for Len. My dessert was a meringue-based pistachio torte, while Len had a very delicious  peach crostata.

It was a warm evening, 28°C at 6:30, and still 22°C at 11:00pm, meaning it was pleasant when we walked home around 9pm. We are enjoying the flowering crape myrtles in the street, and the gorgeous, dolls-house-looking architecture of the homes in this Midtown area. As Len said, it almost feels like the south, except, there are no porch swings!

We walked 9.5kms today, having replaced a couple of the walks we would normally have done with Uber. It was just too darn hot to overdo the walking!

Today’s trivia

There’s a portrait of Washington in the Capitol’s upper house because he was the country’s first President, and of Lincoln in the lower house because he was President in 1860 when Sacramento became the state’s capital.

Today’s images

Still

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