Sacramento notes
Jul. 25th, 2007 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidBest food find: Santander 70% dark chocolate with passion fruit, wonderfully sour (with an oval hechsher from the rabbanut "mem-dalet-yod-yod-nun", which I keep reading as "Midian." Anyone know this one?)
General feel: not a large city. There aren't a lot of pedestrians around, there aren't any supermarkets downtown. There is a lot of public art, though, small pieces as well as large. And a grid system is always easier to figure out while traveling (letters from north to south, numbers from west to east, and addresses based on which block they were in, which I've read about but never noticed in action before.), though I found it a bit strange to have large-ish blocks that were completely square.
What is 4($.26)? $1.46, if you're buying four postcard stamps in the hotel lobby. I never thought to check whether they'd mark up stamps.
The hotel I stayed in overlooked the state house and its garden, which was beautiful. I got up early enough on my last day to fit in a walk through it, looking at all the glorious trees.
To wit:
Indian bean (catalpa bignonioides)
carob (ceratonia siliqua; with carob pods! The first time I've ever seen the pods on the tree.)
giant gum eucalyptus regnans)
Greek fir (abies cephalonica)
Italian stone pine (pinus pinea)
Algerian fir (abies numidica)
horse chestnut (aesculus hippocastanum)
black maple (acer saccharum)
Norway maple (acer platanoides)
empress tree (paulownia tomentosa)
umbrella pine (sciadopitys verticillata)
kurrajong bottle tree (brachychiton populneum)
incense cedar (calocedrus decurrens)
young's lawson cypress (chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'youngii')
pinyon pine (pinus edulis)
ponderosa pine (pinus ponderosa)
torrey pine (pinus torreyana)
valley oak (quercus lobata)
coulter pine (pinus coulteri)
scots pine (pinus sylvestris)
bay leaf live oak (quercus parvula)
Utah juniper (osteosperma)
California buckeye (aesculus californica, with actual nuts on it; I'm not sure whether I've seen non-acorn nuts on trees before)
canyon live oak (quercus chrysolepis)
lowland fir (abies grandis)
California fan palm (washingtonia filifera)
smoke tree (cotinus coggygria)
Japanese maple (acer palmatum)
Colorado blue spruce (picea pungens glauca)
cockspur coral (erythrina crista-galli)
Chilean wine palm (jubaea chilensis)
orange trees of some sort
Canary Island date palm (phoenix canariensis)
purple beech (fagus sylvatica 'purpurea')
southern magnolia (magnolia grandiflora; these totally impressed me - I understand much better now why they're so popular)
English holly (ilex aquifolium)
Montezuma cypress (taxodium mucronatum)
cherry (prunus serrulata
crape myrtle (lagerstroemic indica; these were flowering everywhere around the city)
coast redwood (sequoia sempervirens)
sierra redwood (sequioadendron giganteum)
deodar cedar (cedrus deodara)
cork oak (quercus suber; such bizarre bark-stuff)
red oak (quercus rubra)
western red cedar (thuja plicata; this one grew in such a way that it had twisty bark)
bunya-bunya (araucaria bidwillii)
European olive (olea europaea)
tulip (liriodendron tulipifera)
Japanese camellia 'pink perfection' (camellia japonica)
weeping lawson cypress (chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'pendula')
mourning cypress (cupressus funebris)
bur oak (quercus macrocarpa)
European white birch (betula pendula)
American sweet gum (liquidambar styraciflua)
Formosan sweet gum (liquidambar formosana)
Chinese pistache (pistacia chinensis)
The park has some other features, including the world peace rose garden (many of the flowers past their peak, alas); a small cactus garden (some of them fruiting) with a butia capitata; a haunting Vietnam memorial with many sculptures (some coming out of an etched vertical background, some lower reliefs), also a map of Vietnam, as well as lists of servicepeople (the quote nearby so simple: "All gave some. Some gave all."); a more generic California veterans memorial; a CA firefighters memorial; and a grove of trees planted in 1897 for the Civil War veterans with cuttings of plants from Civil War battlefields.
The hotel with the meetings I went to was designed by pod people; it was very confusing. (Check out 2001 Point West Way, Sacramento, CA, in satellite view on gmaps, to get an idea.)
General feel: not a large city. There aren't a lot of pedestrians around, there aren't any supermarkets downtown. There is a lot of public art, though, small pieces as well as large. And a grid system is always easier to figure out while traveling (letters from north to south, numbers from west to east, and addresses based on which block they were in, which I've read about but never noticed in action before.), though I found it a bit strange to have large-ish blocks that were completely square.
What is 4($.26)? $1.46, if you're buying four postcard stamps in the hotel lobby. I never thought to check whether they'd mark up stamps.
The hotel I stayed in overlooked the state house and its garden, which was beautiful. I got up early enough on my last day to fit in a walk through it, looking at all the glorious trees.
To wit:
Indian bean (catalpa bignonioides)
carob (ceratonia siliqua; with carob pods! The first time I've ever seen the pods on the tree.)
giant gum eucalyptus regnans)
Greek fir (abies cephalonica)
Italian stone pine (pinus pinea)
Algerian fir (abies numidica)
horse chestnut (aesculus hippocastanum)
black maple (acer saccharum)
Norway maple (acer platanoides)
empress tree (paulownia tomentosa)
umbrella pine (sciadopitys verticillata)
kurrajong bottle tree (brachychiton populneum)
incense cedar (calocedrus decurrens)
young's lawson cypress (chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'youngii')
pinyon pine (pinus edulis)
ponderosa pine (pinus ponderosa)
torrey pine (pinus torreyana)
valley oak (quercus lobata)
coulter pine (pinus coulteri)
scots pine (pinus sylvestris)
bay leaf live oak (quercus parvula)
Utah juniper (osteosperma)
California buckeye (aesculus californica, with actual nuts on it; I'm not sure whether I've seen non-acorn nuts on trees before)
canyon live oak (quercus chrysolepis)
lowland fir (abies grandis)
California fan palm (washingtonia filifera)
smoke tree (cotinus coggygria)
Japanese maple (acer palmatum)
Colorado blue spruce (picea pungens glauca)
cockspur coral (erythrina crista-galli)
Chilean wine palm (jubaea chilensis)
orange trees of some sort
Canary Island date palm (phoenix canariensis)
purple beech (fagus sylvatica 'purpurea')
southern magnolia (magnolia grandiflora; these totally impressed me - I understand much better now why they're so popular)
English holly (ilex aquifolium)
Montezuma cypress (taxodium mucronatum)
cherry (prunus serrulata
crape myrtle (lagerstroemic indica; these were flowering everywhere around the city)
coast redwood (sequoia sempervirens)
sierra redwood (sequioadendron giganteum)
deodar cedar (cedrus deodara)
cork oak (quercus suber; such bizarre bark-stuff)
red oak (quercus rubra)
western red cedar (thuja plicata; this one grew in such a way that it had twisty bark)
bunya-bunya (araucaria bidwillii)
European olive (olea europaea)
tulip (liriodendron tulipifera)
Japanese camellia 'pink perfection' (camellia japonica)
weeping lawson cypress (chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'pendula')
mourning cypress (cupressus funebris)
bur oak (quercus macrocarpa)
European white birch (betula pendula)
American sweet gum (liquidambar styraciflua)
Formosan sweet gum (liquidambar formosana)
Chinese pistache (pistacia chinensis)
The park has some other features, including the world peace rose garden (many of the flowers past their peak, alas); a small cactus garden (some of them fruiting) with a butia capitata; a haunting Vietnam memorial with many sculptures (some coming out of an etched vertical background, some lower reliefs), also a map of Vietnam, as well as lists of servicepeople (the quote nearby so simple: "All gave some. Some gave all."); a more generic California veterans memorial; a CA firefighters memorial; and a grove of trees planted in 1897 for the Civil War veterans with cuttings of plants from Civil War battlefields.
The hotel with the meetings I went to was designed by pod people; it was very confusing. (Check out 2001 Point West Way, Sacramento, CA, in satellite view on gmaps, to get an idea.)