Railroads and Sacramento

Most of us have memories associated to our grandparents. I particularly have a lot of them. With that I want to do the same for my grand-kids.

This past weekend August 5/6, we took our 5 year old granddaughter to Old Town Sacramento. Now we live in the Bay Area, so the drive would have been easy….but I wanted the little one to have some of the memories I have of tripping around with my grandfather. Ok she has 2 grandmothers but so what, creating the memory was the key here. When I was young my Grandpa and I would jump on BART and go to San Francisco and ride the Trolley or the Ferries for an entire day. I remember being 5 or 6 when Grandpa took me on Amtrak for the first time to Sacramento and we went to the California State Railroad Museum http://www.csrmf.org/ . That is what we re-created this weekend.

We boarded the train with a little girl who was literally vibrating with excitement. She was going on the grown-ups train. After we found seats and got her settled she hopped back and forth between us  for the window views.

As we arrived at the Sacramento station, walking into the main lobby was like taking a step back in time. The old wooden benches, the mural showing when the groundbreaking took place to lay the rail lines. It was actually pretty cool to look at it as an adult. Of course the little one was not impressed until we started our walk into Old Town. Her first comment about Old Town, was “it looks like a cowboy movie”. She was right, the old wooden and brick structures do look like they have come out of and old western.

We strolled down the river dock from Amtrak toward our hotel. We stayed at the Embassy Suites on Capitol Mall. It really worked out as a perfect location. At one end of the main strip of Old Town was the Amtrak Station, at the other was the hotel. We had a room with a river view, and view of the Towers Bridge.

Our original intent at heading to the hotel so early was just to drop our bags at hotel storage. We were pleasantly surprised that we could actually check-in at noon. So we went up to the suite, got unpacked and headed into touristville aka Old Town. First on the agenda was lunch. I had done plenty of reviewing prior to the trip, so I had a general idea of where we would be eating. We had lunch at the Rio City Cafe. Great food, no one tried to hurry you out, and it was comfortable. Now keeping this kid full is always a challenge. Anytime we go somewhere I always have granola bars and fruit snacks in my pack because I am well aware “I’m hungry” will be coming soon.  So that being said, this kid ate a bowl of clam chowder, a couple pieces of bread and butter, and bacon wrapped shrimp, as well as pilfering french fries off of my plate and another type of potato off of her Gigi’s plate.  Finally the “I’m full now” came….and the wandering around began.

We had booked ahead the tour of the Old Sacramento Underground http://www.historicoldsac.org/programs/programs-underground.asp and had a little time to kill. So we popped in and out of the shops. The tour was interesting, and led by Jouni (yoni) who professed to be a closet Archeologist. He actually had heard about the supposed underground before he ever had the tour job and had been researching about it as much as he was able. The history of how the Underground was developed was the most interesting thing to me, that and how a non-technical society pulled off the construction with the less than powerful tools they had. From this tour it has now made me aware of why some of the odd things I see in buildings are really there. I’m not going to spoil it by telling you about it, just know if you go to Old Sac the tour is full of information. Anyhow, by the time the tour was over, it had gotten REALLY WARM and humid outside, so we decided to head back to the air-conditioned hotel.

At the Embassy Suites, in the early evening they have what they call the “Managers Reception”. This really is more for the adults than kids. Wine, beer and other drinks are available, as are snacks of chips and dip. It’s not really kid oriented. However she was fascinated by the all of the fountains in the reception area and pretty content to watch the water while we had a glass of wine. We opted for dinner in the hotel cafe rather than go back out to the heat of the evening. After dinner we went up to the room just to kick back and relax. None of us are used to the heat that we experienced in the later afternoon. So the kid was set up in the living area with Nickelodeon and we went into the other room to watch a movie. Of course there was a lot of running back and forth by the little one asking this or that, she kept looking outside waiting for it to get dark because we had told her the bridge would light up. We were pleasantly surprised to hear jazz music, apparently on Friday evenings a jazz band plays on the hotel patio. They were really good, so we just muted the TV, read and listened to jazz.

As the sun started to set we called the little on to come see the colors out of the window. Remember, we had a river view. Now we just needed it to get dark so the bridge would be lit, and then the little one would settle in for the night. I have to admit, that bridge lit up is an amazing site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning we packed up, went down for the complimentary breakfast which was really good. The Embassy had an omelet to order station, fruit, scrambled eggs, breakfast meats, cereal, danish and of course juice and coffee.  We were all stuffed when we were done. After breakfast we gather our packs and strolled down the Capitol Mall toward the Capitol building. On the way was the Wells Fargo Museum ( who knew, we didn’t) and the little on loved the stage coach and the gold coins.  From there we headed to the Capitol building, explaining on the way why the building was important and what kind of work is done there. It was declared then the she was going to work there when she grows up.

After we had looked around a bit and taken photos of the budding Governor, we headed back to Old Town, did some tourist shopping, and headed to the California State Railroad Museum. I hadn’t been there since I was her age so the exhibits had altered a bit in 30+ years.  The mannequins in the cars gave her a start, one of them who was a surveyor had its hands up and she yelled it was Freddy Kruger. After we got past that little bit, she really started to enjoy seeing how the trains have changed over time.

From the Museum we headed to lunch as we had some time to kill before our train to head home. We settled on the Cafe’ New Orleans. It was comfortable, had a great choice of foods, and not to far from the station. Now that we had a full kid we headed to the station. We boarded, and this was the result of all of the walking and excitement of the 2 days.

As for the next trip, who knows. Happy trails!!!!