UNITED STATES – CALIFORNIA NORTH

Day 6 Nov 12

CALIFORNIA EXTREME NORTH (Eureka, Redding, Ukiah, Chico)

REDDING
Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay. Completed in 2004, this cable-stayed bridge (large pier with 14 cables at the west end) is 720 feet long and 23 feet wide as it crosses the Sacramento Bridge. The deck has 2,345 glass panels cleaned daily by a floor cleaning machine. There were many fishermen on the river. 
Diestelhorst Bridge. This pedestrian bridge crossing the Sacramento River in west Redding, was a road bridge. It parallels a newer road bridge just to the east. There are nice clear glass light standards.
Schreder Planetarium. Open only Friday to Sunday. Has old fashioned solar system shows.

CHICO 
National Yo-Yo Musueum. At the back of the toy/ornament/game store, Bird in Hand, this was well worth the drive. Hundreds of yo-yos, trophys from the local and national yo-yo competitions and a great video showing the amazing tricks. Free

Corrections
California North
Religious Temples: California – San Francisco Golden Gate ferry. Should be in a  Transportation category. 

CALIFORNIA NORTH (San Francisco, Sacramento, Napa)

World Heritage Sites: The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright
Marin Civic Centre, VC Morris Gift Shop, 
Tentative WHS: California Current Conservation Complex

SACRAMENTO/ELK GROVE/ROSEVILLE
State Indian Museum. A great small museum with a wealth of artifacts dominated by baskets including some tiny ones. $5
ON on street next to a park in downtown Sacramento.

Day 7 Nov 13
Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. Built in 1885, it is gorgeous inside with all surfaces painted including the inside of the large dome.
California Museum. The first floor is mostly about immigration (the Chinese) and how the Japanese were treated in WWII. Upstairs has a large section on women in California and baseball (and the role minorities have played). $10, $8 reduced.
Crocker Art Museum. Don’t miss this wonderful, very large art museum. The Crockers were wealthy railway people from the 1860s, and their mansion is incorporated into the museum (wonderful staircases, wood, and ceilings). The breadth of art is huge including photography and a large porcelain section. $15, $10 reduced

Jelly Belly Factory. The museum has a complete history from the 1880s, many videos and lots of candy-making equipment. They make an incredible variety of candy. The tour in the visitor’s centre was $8 (reduced) and I didn’t go. Museum free.

Oxbow Public Market. Only one stand of produce and fish, the rest is wine, and many restaurants.

CALISTOGA
Castello di Amorosa. An opulent winery in a castle on top of a hill.
ON School parking lot in Sonoma.

Day 8 Nov 14
Fairmont Hotel, Sonoma. A luxury hotel. As I usually do, I used a bathroom. Hospitality legends.
Rancho Obi-Wan, Petaluma. Bizzarium. All about Star Wars. I think it is closed as there was nothing at the Google position.
Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael. A Frank Lloyd Wright building. A huge three-story curving complex – Courts on floor 1, civic offices on floors 2 and 3. Several openings up to higher levels, plants and a skylight extending the length of the building.

Muir Woods National Monument. Climb a steep winding road up to the monument. Requires a reservation to park obtained from gomuirwoods.com. This is a grove of 400-800-year-old redwoods with easy trails that cross Redwood Creek several times. The entire loop trail is 5.4 miles long. It was very busy and I had to go online to get a reservation. Rather than driving the winding road back, the road descends to Highway 101.

SAN FRANCISCO
Legion of Honor. A fine arts museum established to honour the 3,600 Californians killed in WWI. All art is before the Impressionist period and although great art, is not my favourite. I liked the furniture the most. The largest Rodin collection outside of France. An organ has had its pipes hidden behind faux stone (actually canvas) in the rotunda and end of the hall (concerts are held on Saturday afternoons at 2 pm). $20, $17 reduced.
ON Lands End Viewpoint. A great viewpoint looking over the ocean in northwest San Francisco.

Day 9 Nov 15
Murphy Windmill. A functioning windmill in Golden Gate Park was built in 1903 to pump water for the park. I was restored and looks new with a dark grey brick facade, and a rotating cap. It wasn’t open.
Mount Davidson Cross. A white, 103-foot tall, concrete/steel cross on top of Mount Davidson, the highest point in San Francisco and the center of the city. There have been many crosses here but this one was built in 1933. After legal battles, the city sold the land to The Council of Armenian American Organizations of Northern California in 2003 and a plaque to the 1915 Armenian Genocide (where 1.4 million Armenians were killed) was installed. The cross is reached on a short 5-minute hike.
16th Avenue Tiles Steps. A mosaic staircase of 163 steps 90 feet high that leads to Grandview Park. 2,000 unique tiles are constructed from 75,000 glass fragments to produce a sea-to-sky scene.
San Francisco Botanical Garden. A large garden with a huge pond, waterfall and many walking trails. Free
DeYoung Museum. A modern art museum with a huge range of subjects, this was a much more interesting museum than the Legion of Honour. A highlight is the observation tower which gives expansive views of the entire city. $20, $17 reduced
Inn at the Presidio Hotel. Built in 1903, this 22-room, 3-story, brick boutique hotel in the original officer’s building. Has a display of bugles and photos of the army.
SF Camerawork. A small photo gallery in the Fort Mason area supporting local photographers. Some nice pictures – all were in focus and reasonably composed. Free
Fairmont Heritage Place – Ghirardelli Square. Originally built in about 1907, it is now a private residence/hotel with 2 and 3 bedroom condos. Rooms are around $900/night. I talked to the nice doorman for a while about the election.
I parked next to the San Francisco piers and rode my bike to see all these sights. 
Tadich Grill. Opened in 1849, it was the “first cold day restaurant”. Quite narrow, the seating on one side is a long bar and small tables on the other side that surround the bar/kitchen.
101 California Street is a 183 m (600 ft), 48-story office skyscraper completed in 1982. The faceted cylindrical tower features a seven-story, glass-enclosed lobby and a granite plaza with flower beds and a fountain. It has 32 elevators. A mass murder in 1993. by a disgruntled client of a law firm killed eight people and wounded six.
Hobart Building. Built in 1914, it is an office high rise at the time the second tallest building in the city, with 21 floors and 87 m (285 ft). Its sculpted terra cotta exterior with Baroque ornamentation and handcrafted brass and Italian marble interior are a noted example of neoclassical architecture. Its unusual shape was dictated by the site, which is an asymmetric polygon, and since a neighbouring structure was torn down in 1967 exposing one flank, it is now even more idiosyncratic and striking.
V. C. Morris Gift Shop. Located at 140 Maiden Lanen, I had to ask about its location as it is now occupied by ISAIA Napoli, an Italian men’s sartorial brand (Xanadu Gallery (closed in August 2015) restored the building to Wright’s vision. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1948, it was used by Wright as a physical proof of concept for the circular ramp at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. All of the built-in furniture is constructed out of black walnut.
Fairmont Hotel is a luxury hotel atop Nob Hill. The hotel was named after mining magnate and U.S. Senator James Graham Fair (1831–94), by his daughters, Theresa Fair Oelrichs and Virginia Fair Vanderbilt, who built the hotel in his honor. The hotel was the vanguard of the Fairmont Hotels and Resorts chain. The group is now owned by Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, but all the original Fairmont hotels still keep their names.
The hotel was nearly completed before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Although the structure survived, the interior was heavily damaged by fire, and opening was delayed until 1907. It used innovative reinforced concrete, which could produce buildings capable of withstanding earthquakes and other disasters.
In 1945, the Fairmont hosted international statesmen for meetings which culminated in the creation of the United Nations.
Among the hotel’s attractions is the Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar, a historic tiki bar, which opened in 1945 with a bandstand on a barge that floats in a former swimming pool, a dining area built from parts of an old sailing ship, and artificial thunderstorms.
The Venetian Room was where Tony Bennett first sang “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” in December 1961. A statue of Tony Bennett sits outside.
InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel is a luxury hotel on Nob Hill finished in 1926 (Hopkins made his fortune with the Central Pacific Railway (the same as the Crockers in Sacramento).
Tenderloin Museum. A wonderful small museum in the original 1907 Cadillac Hotel rebuilt after the 1906 earthwake. Has a series of vignettes of the long history of this district named for the bribes given to policement who could now afford tenderloin. The district was once the original centre of town and has gone through an amazing range of functions – a centre of prostitution, gambling, alcohol in the Prohibition, gay and transgender rights, and a centre of immigration in the 60s to 80s (Vietnamese, Indian, Cambodian). It is now the “rough” part of the city. I was allowed to bring my bike inside for safety. $10, $7 reduced
Contemporary Jewish Museum. A two-story art museum showcasing Californian Jewish artists. Built in an original power house. Some were interesting especially “A Seat at the Table”, a table set with dishes and foods with a video showing hands serving themselves. Free as it is closing on Dec 12 due to financial problems. 
Museum of the African Diaspora. A 3-story art museum featuring black artists from all over the world. It has a wide range of art and furniture. $15, $7 reduced
Mexican Museum. On the second floor of the Veronica Building, the entrance was hard to find and then couldn’t be entered as the small lobby door was locked and the buzzer didn’t work.
Palace Hotel. Built in 1907, this huge hotel occupies an entire city block. It has a small museum of its history. A highlight is the Garden Court dining room with its arched glass roof.
Salesforce Tower is a 61-story, 1,070-foot (326 m) supertall skyscraper finished in 2018 for over $1.1 billion. It is the tallest building in San Francisco and the second-tallest building both in California and west of the Mississippi River after the 1,100 feet (335 m) Wilshire Grand Center in Los Angeles. It is obelisk-shaped, with a grid of metal fins running from the base of the building to the roof. The exterior of the building consists of a glass and steel curtain wall with a steel frame and a concrete core. Designed to be a green building, it has water conservation measures and air intake systems. The Salesforce Tower consists of a glass and steel curtain wall, surrounding a structural steel frame, which surrounds a reinforced concrete core. The building is enclosed in a lattice consisting of white aluminum fins and perforated sunshades. A public art light sculpture at the top of the building, consisting of 11,000 LEDs, displays video animations every evening that can be seen from up to 30 miles away.

The tower’s silhouette is smoothly tapering off toward the top (the top 150 feet (46 m) above the 61st floor have been described as “largely ornamental”. The 61st floor is an observation deck and lounge opened to the public once every month.
The footprint of Salesforce Tower rests on landfill near San Francisco’s original waterfront, an area prone to soil liquefaction during earthquakes and is designed to withstand the strongest earthquakes expected with 42 piles 300 feet (91 m) down to bedrock and a 14-foot (4.3 m) thick foundation mat.
Claremont Hotel, Berkeley. A luxury hotel at the foot of Claremont Canyon in the Berkeley Hills. Has 279 guest rooms, a 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m2) spa, 10 tennis courts, and 22 acres (8.9 ha) of landscaped gardens. It opened in 1915 in the Tudor Revival style, with its exposed half-timber decorative finish.
ON near the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden

Day 10 Nov 16
OAKLAND/BERKELEY/RICHMOND
Shattuck Hotel, Berkeley. Opened in 1910 in the Mission Revival Style (square corner turrets and arched windows). The building was made from reinforced steel and concrete.
In 1926 a covered arcade was built on the ground floor of the annex which tripled the size of the original six-story building, adding 120 rooms for a total of 300.
The Berkeley City Club Hotel. Originally the clubhouse of the Berkeley Women’s City Club (social, civic, and cultural progress). This private club is no longer restricted to women and is available as a hotel, and used for weddings, and other occasions. On the second floor, the club also houses Julia’s Restaurant and Morgan’s Bar & Lounge.
Opened in 1930, It has Moorish and Gothic elements.
Oakland Museum of California. I only saw the California Gallery of Art portion of the museum, a large venue. I especially enjoyed the furniture (esp Charles Eames) and the pottery. $15 $12 reduced.

Pacific Bus Museum, Fremont. A great museum with wonderfully restored buses – several Greyhounds, municipal buses and one from the Glacier Park Lodge. One guy on the staff was excellent. $5

SAN JOSE/SANTA CLARA/SUNNYVALE
Gurdwara Sahib of San Jose. A Sikh temple, the prayer hall is a huge square with no columns and a relatively low flat ceiling. Wash your hands, take off your shoes and sit on the floor.
ON Walmart parking lot in San Jose. RVs are prohibited but I thought I would try it anyway in a remote corner.

Day 11 Nov 17.
History San José. 20 buildings relocated here. Lovely. Free
Apple Park, Cupertino. Can’t be visited by non-Apple employees. See from the viewpoint at the Apple Service Center and use the VR app to see all buildings (lift the roof to see inside).
Computer History Museum, Mountain View. 2000 years of computers. Some interesting things but my poor knowledge of computers made it not great. $19.50, $16.50 reduced.

Duarte’s Tavern, Pescadero. Originally a bar/barbershop established in 1894 and a restaurant was added in 1937. I ate at the bar – the fish and chips was average for US$30. I doubt that I will eat at any more restaurants in the US.
Pigeon Point Lighthouse, Pescadero. After the 1853 wreck of the Carrier Pigeon, a fog horn was built and the lighthouse added in 1872. It is presently being refurbished and scaffolding covering all but the very top. A dorm room in the hostel was $48, the most expensive (once exchange figured in) I have ever stayed in.
ON side of road about 7 miles north of Santa Cruz.

Day 12 Nov 18
Point Pinos Lighthouse, Pacific Grove. This very short lighthouse sits on top of a house. It has a red cap.

Driving 17-Mile Drive costs $10. I’ve driven it before and didn’t go 

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