We both slept very well, only waking at anormal local time. No sign of jet lag apart from a little general tiredness. Alastair and Sophie are at work all weekdays we are here, except for a couple they are taking off after next weekend, and Labor Day on this coming Monday. Alastair was off on his bike/bus/bike trip to work in San Francisco itself, and Sophie was working from home as she does 3 days a week.
We had a slow start to the morning, then headed out through South Berkeley towards the centre of Berkeley, or should that be the "center"? The streets on the route to our intended cafe were very attractive - generously wide, trees everywhere, almost no traffic and a great variety of interesting houses. The premium style is like a large redwood-clad country cabin. They are generally very cottagey-looking, quite highly decorated, and have very scruffy gardens! The climate is just too dry to allow for rich growth and the front gardens and verges tend to look rather neglected. There isn't much money about for footpath repairs and there are huge trees growing in the verges, so the footpaths are up and down, all cracked and lumpy, with asphalt ramps or grinding to smooth out the worst of the steps created by underground roots.
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| A garden just down from A & S |
We have been most impressed with the traffic. Speeds are very gentle compared with NZ and you only have to look like you are trying to cross a street and cars will stop and wave you over. The lack of speed and noise is a pleasure.
We had coffee at Baker and Commons, a very popular spot in the Elmwood precinct. We were surprised at the prices. We'd imagined that it would be similar to NZ, but it was way more. A cappuccino for Karen - flat whites are not on the menu - was $4.75, add a standard $1/cup tip, and it came to a shade under $10NZ. That's an awful lot for a coffee which wasn't up to NZ's admittedly high standards. It feels pretty hard to justify.
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| An amazing range of flours in an organic shop |
For dinner we went out to a co-op run pizza joint where there is only one pizza and one salad type available each evening, both vegetarian. Delicious crunchy pizza.
All-in-all, a very pleasant start to our fortnight in Berkeley.
