Sacramento: California’s Ghost Town
Yes, we were warned. But we went anyway. We were told Sacramento was dull and yes, it is. That being said though, we had a great couple of days in the Californian capital, a city which has less atmosphere than Canberra. Now that’s saying something. There are banners hanging in downtown Sacramento with the slogan ’Sacramento: Discover the Gold’. By the end of our first (and only) full day in the city, we had discovered the gold. Comedy gold. This wasn’t just because we spent two hours of our afternoon drinking cheap beer and margaritas either, but it did help.
We did the touristy thing and visited the State Capitol (pretty, but dull) and then went off to see Old Sacramento which, even with it’s overpriced candy stores and restaurants, was also incredibly dull. It is an attempt to show how Sacramento used to be back in the day, but all it ends up being, like all those places, is tacky and an attempt to have you spend lots of money. As we wandered the streets we noticed how incredibly devoid of people they were and I thought perhaps they had closed downtown due to some bomb threat but that we hadn’t been notified. But no, it was to do with the Californian government giving each state worker the first three Fridays of every month off in return for a 15% pay cut. It was indeed one of those Fridays and since Sacramento’s downtown is dominated by government buildings, instead of being out and about, the workforce were at home, tending to their gardens and feeling lucky that at least they live in Sacramento and that there is nothing to spend your money on there anyway.
Further along on our walk, we discovered something which I have never seen before. Something probably seen as helpful to the community by the government and something seen as hilarious by me. I have since seen them in other cities, but we found these LifeTrail stations positioned within a small park alongside the main road that runs right through Sacramento. These stations are placed to aid seniors in keeping fit and healthy through a series of stretches and workouts. Now I’m sorry, but I don’t care how old and senile I get, there is no way you will catch me doing my series of ‘Partial Lunges’ next to a main road and with a few homeless men drinking whiskey watching on.
We spent some time in a (different) park and then indulged in our usual activity of spending elongated periods eating food and drinking coffee. At a loss for things to do, I even started learning Norwegian. I’m not very good. In the end, at 4pm, we decided to go find a bar we had seen on a big billboard that advertised 154 tequilas. We couldn’t miss this and so we headed there for happy hour. At 6, once happy hour ended, we strolled out of the bar giggling and with a slightly better view of Sacramento. That night, after sobering up a bit, we went and found a crepe shop we had looked up on Yelp and had quite a nice end to our day.
The next morning we stumbled across a cafe/diner that served us up pancakes and unlimited coffee for not very much money and we made our way to the train station, overfull and happy to be heading back towards civilisation. I must give credit though to our Couchsurfing host, Joe, who has a lovely house with two gorgeous cats and was a friendly and helpful host. Photos of all this fun stuff can be found in my California album on Facebook.
