Page 86 - 2015 Travel Guide to California

INSIDER’S
»
TIP
With a little planning, visiting
Bay Area museums can be
inexpensive and full of surprises.
Almost all offer free days: first
Sundays of each month at the
OAKLAND MUSEUM OF
CALIFORNIA and first Tuesdays
at San Francisco’s DE YOUNG and
LEGION OF HONOR. Admission is
always free at THE CANTOR ARTS
CENTER in Palo Alto. THE
EXPLORATORIUM offers six free
days per year and CALIFORNIA
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES several
free Sundays. Special events,
performances, food and cocktails
are on hand for visitors on Friday
evenings at the Oakland and
the de Young museums.
East Bay: Berkeley & Oakland
On the eastern side of the bay lies the col-
lege town of Berkeley, with its history
of political idealism, University of Cali-
fornia academic prestige and coffeehouse
intellectualism. Berkeley is almost syn-
onymous with Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse
and the movement to organic, local and
seasonal food. Berkeley’s larger neighbor,
Oakland, is a culturally diverse city with
vibrant neighborhoods and lovely Lake
Merritt, whose three-mile path draws jog-
gers and walkers.
City & Town
Even though it was surpassed in popula-
tion by San Jose long ago, San Francisco
remains the region’s cultural hub. The city
draws more than 16 million travelers each
year to its dense 49 square miles con-
taining its famously steep hills, thousands
of restaurants offering an astonishing
84 2015 T R AV E L G U I D E TO C A L I F O R N I A
variety of cuisines, different groups of
people, fascinating neighborhoods, parks,
Victorian-era houses and world-class
museums and cultural activities.
The city is easy to explore on foot, with
the waterfront Embarcadero, Fisherman’s
Wharf, Chinatown and Union Square (the
largest shopping area in the western U.S.)
all within a short walk of each other. Col-
orful vintage streetcars rumble down the
Embarcadero and Market Street, con-
necting to public transportation that
carries visitors to the city’s many diverse
neighborhoods and to Golden Gate Park,
the large greenbelt that extends to the
Pacific Ocean.
The region’s other major cities are San
Jose, where revitalization has brought an
urban vibe, restaurants and museums
downtown, and Oakland, which attracts
visitors with the renovated Museum of
California, bay-front Jack London Square
and a trendy dining scene it shares with its
college town neighbor, Berkeley.
The Great Outdoors
One of the world’s largest urban parks—the
Golden Gate National Recreation Area—
stretches over 60 miles of Bay Area coast-
line. The area encompasses beaches,
historic sites, biking and hiking trails and
vast open spaces to savor the Bay Area’s
varied natural beauty. Among the high-
lights are the majestic Marin Headlands
and San Francisco’s Presidio and Crissy
Field, a popular walking area and restored
wetlands that also draws kiteboarders to the
white-capped waters at the Golden Gate.
Rolling green hillsides dotted with Cali-
fornia golden poppies make spring an
especially ideal time to explore Mount
Tamalpais and Muir Woods in Marin County.
Point Reyes National Seashore’s beautiful
coastal terrain contains an abundance of
wildlife, including migrating shorebirds and
ducks, whales that are easily seen off the
coast in migration season (mid January to
mid March) and a herd of tule elk.
There also is no lack of wide open
spaces in the East Bay, where the regional
park district includes 65 parks covering
113,000 acres in Alameda and Contra Costa
counties. In the Santa Cruz Mountains,
amid several vast open space preserves lies
California’s oldest state park, Big Basin
Redwoods, established in 1902.
GREGORY BERTOLINI, FINE ARTS MUSEUMS OF SF