Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cal in an Afternoon: Berkeley, Breathlessly
Berkeley and Oakland, major American cities in their own right, are located
right across the Bay, a 15-minute BART ride away. But I know that the vast
majority of visitors to the area come to see San Francisco, not Oakland,
where the sights are not as well known as they are in San Francisco.
Berkeley, for its part, has lots more going for it for a day's visit, par-
ticularly as a thriving college town. If you can take 4 or 5 hours out from
your San Francisco sightseeing, a trip over is worth your time. That's
because it's home to the legendary 178-acre university known simply as
“Cal” for its claim of being the first University of California to be founded.
That's the
University of California, Berkeley,
or even
UC Berkeley,
to the
formal. While UC Davis is known for agricultural education, Cal is all about
the sciences, and its students have been blowing the world's minds for
more than 140 years. On weekdays, free tours of the main campus of 178
acres depart at 10am from the
Visitors Information Center
(101
University Hall, 2200 University Ave.;
%
510/642-5215).
On weekends,
meet at the base of the Sather Tower (the giant one—you can't miss it)
at 10am Saturdays and 1pm Sundays. I strongly suggest taking one of
these tours, because they sneak you into buildings where you otherwise
couldn't go without a student ID.
The tours, which are led by trained students, are heavily used by
prospective scholars, so in springtime your group may swell to 200 and
your guide made dwell rather tediously on the school's rivalry with
Stanford, but everyone is welcome, and you'll get heaps of fascinating his-
torical information about the educational institution that fomented some
of the strongest protests of the 1960s and 1970s.
Cal is responsible for tons of milestones, including the discovery of
vitamins B, E, and K; plutonium; uranium 238; and the stumpy London
plane tree, a hybrid that you'll see only here and in places in San
Francisco. I consider the grounds, which are handsomely traversed by the
quiet Strawberry Creek, one of America's quintessential college campuses:
green, open, and interrupted by inhumanly blocky campus buildings you'd
better pray you don't get lost in. You'll see Le Conte Hall, where the first
atom splitters did their work. Keep your eyes peeled for parking signs that
read, in total seriousness, “Reserved for NL”—meaning Nobel Laureate.
(What kind of a car was in that space? I saw a Toyota Prius.) You know the
parking situation is grim if you need a Nobel Prize to get a space. The Doe
& Moffitt Library, mostly for undergraduates, doesn't allow public access to
the 10 million books in its stacks, but its lobby areas, lined with glass
cases filled with priceless manuscripts, is open to all. In a reading room
upstairs, you'll also find Emanuel Leutze's 1854
Washington Rallying the
Troops at Monmouth,
which was intended to be a companion piece to his
Washington Crossing the Delaware
(now at New York's Met). Your tour will
