The Sacramento Joe Rush

Hard core travellers will always belittle the time you spent in a place as “not being long enough to capture the essence”. Bunch of drivel i say. While it would be great to be able to spend months in every country, or weeks in each city, it's simply not viable. I'm more of the “2 hours is better than Zero” sort of guy. So on my journey from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco, I was ready to take advantage of the 2 hour bus layover i was forced to take while waiting for my Greyhound connection in Sacramento.

The birthplace of the California gold rush of 160 years ago. At that time the city's population exploded by doubling in less than a year. At the same time, the city was made capital of California and has remained so ever since. I arrived at something ridiculous like 6 o'clock in the morning. I was only half awake as i stumbled out of the centrally located bus station to see what I could see. Not only was I still asleep, but apparently, so was Sacramento. The streets were all but empty. The cafes had yet to open. Even the bird had hit snooze on their alarm clocks an extra time. I wasn't hard to find the city centre, after all, i was standing in the middle of it. The first thing i managed to stubble upon was the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. Unbeknownst to me, priests like to sleep in too as the place was unfortunately closed. Just down the pedestrianized street was the California State Capitol building (title picture). Any respectable capital should have one. It was all big and grand and stuff, but Schwarzenegger doesn't even live in the city. He still lives in L.A.

I ended up wandering down to the river. It was here that the gold rush began, it would have been down right irresponsible for me to have missed it. It turned out to be a collection of moving water. Big shock! Wouldn't have expected that from a "river". But it was peaceful. And it's always fun to walk in the footsteps of history. But with my bus about to depart for San Francisco, i had to head back to the bus station. Was i able to form a real opinion of Sacramento? Not really. Did i stretch my legs after suffering through 14 hours on a Greyhound? Oh God, YES! So i guess I'd have to say that the trip was an overall success.