Tag: travel
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Lagunitas Brewing Company tour
Today I took a tour of the Lagunitas Brewing operation in Petaluma. The facility was largely built before they sold themselves to Heineken, and still operates independently. Tickets for the tour are free and (if you’re over 21) include a free beer. The tour focuses very little on brewing and much more of the stories…
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Marin County Civic Center
Exterior of the building The more I’ve seen of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs, the more I’m convinced he was an interior designer at heart who happened to get tasked with architecture. His interiors are always unique and playful, but the exteriors are almost offensively boring. It’s certainly true of the Marin County Civic Center. From…
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Museum of International Propaganda
My last stop in downtown San Rafael was a tiny museum with an unusual premise: the Museum of International Propaganda. Housed in a former shoe store, each section of the museum is devoted to a certain type of propaganda. Examples include leader worship, promoting the military, and demonizing a perceived enemy. It seemed to me…
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Louis Pasteur “420” statue
When I got off the bus from the Larkspur Ferry Terminal, I discovered I was a short walk from the origin of a well known slang term: 420, the not-so-secret code for marijuana. I had to go see it for myself. As Atlas Obscura explains this unusual statue of Louis Pasteur in front of San…
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Mission San Rafael Arcangel
For the Forth of July weekend, I decided to split the difference between a real vacation and a “staycation,” opting to explore several parts of the North Bay I’ve never or rarely been to in the past. My first stop is in San Rafael, named after the second to last of the Spanish missions in…
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Riding Amtrak’s California Zephyr: Life on board the train
I assume most people have never ridden the California Zephyr route — if they’ve ever been on Amtrak at all. This post is for those curious about what life is like aboard the train. It’s an important consideration since the entire route is a serious time commitment at around 52 hours. From Chicago heading west…
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Riding Amtrak’s California Zephyr: Tickets, scheduling, stations, and boarding
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: the California Zephyr’s schedule is very inflexible. Each stop gets one train per day, per direction. This is not a commuter train. While planning my trip I purchased the majority of my train tickets directly from Amtrak’s website. These tickets appeared in the Amtrak app on…
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Riding Amtrak’s California Zephyr: The trains
As I outlined in my first post about the trip, in spring 2019 I took a trip across America via train on the California Zephyr route with stops in Chicago, Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Omaha before returning home to San Francisco. In this blog post I’ll go over the trains themselves before delving…
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Reno wrap up and stray observations
Reno: it’s the city most of us think of either as a second-rate Las Vegas, or a spot you stop by on your way to somewhere more interesting like Lake Tahoe — or Las Vegas. What I’m saying is most of us tend to view Reno less of as a destination and more of a…
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Reno street art: Midtown
In the last post I went over some of the street art in Reno’s downtown. Now, onto the Midtown neighborhood. Not long ago Midtown was known for dingy motels and strip clubs; to some extent that’s still true, but it’s undergoing a renaissance these days. And why not? It’s a short walk from downtown —…
About Eric
Travel, movies, comedy, tech, and whatever I find on the streets of San Francisco.
Contact: mrericsir “at” gmail.com
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