Friday in Sacramento.  What a beautiful day here.  We did sleep in a bit but not as long as I wanted to, of course.  Hal had made an appointment for us to take our car in for an oil change and tire rotation so we couldn’t laze away the entire day, but first Maria made us a delicious breakfast!  Hal and David took the car in and then we discussed our day.  Our first stop was Vick’s.  It’s a neighborhood grill with homemade ice cream.  We weren’t hungry for lunch but we all wanted ice cream.  It is the coolest place — like Heggy’s without handmade chocolates!

One thing I wanted to do while we are here is tour the Capitol Building.  It is an 1874 building and it is beautiful.

We took an hour long tour and it was very interesting.  Here are two of our favorite portraits of former California Governors.

Here is the most interesting thing we learned.  Governor Schwarzenegger bought, with his own money, this bear (picture below) which sits outside the Governor’s office.  He bought it because the bear is the official animal of the state of California and is on the state seal.  First mistake was he bought it in Colorado (instead of from a California artist) and secondly, it is NOT the kind of bear that is the official state animal.  The official state animal is a grizzly bear and this one, that sits right outside the Governor’s office is a brown bear!!!  Really?

Here is a nice statute of Ronald Reagan.

Hal and Maria then took us on a city tour so we could see the various neighborhoods.  Sacramento is a beautiful city and very walkable.  We could live here easily but we certainly couldn’t afford it!

We had a leisurely evening visiting.  David made us his famous artisanal gin and tonics and Maria prepared a delicious dinner for us.  Lemon, garlic chicken over brown rice for us and sweet potato ravioli for David.  Followed by scrumptious almond cake.  We had missed the Ruth Badger Ginsburg CNN special film and Maria had taped it so we watched it. What a GREAT documentary! Everyone should watch it.

It was a lovely day and now it’s time for bed.