Berkeley

Outside of car trips to Walmart, Staples, Best Buy or our hotel, the preferred mode of transportation for Mike and I to get around town was walking.  Car traffic around the Berkeley campus was terrible.  Even getting out of Emily's driveway was a bit problematic.

UC Berkeley campus parking is very restricted so Emily already had the walking mindset.  After being there barely a week she could direct us to all the restaurants or businesses that we could walk to between her house and the campus.  She suggested that we go to Pappy's Grill and Sports Bar for dinner on Saturday night and we liked it so well we went back again on Sunday.  Not only did they have traditional BBQ sandwiches (with jalapeños) and fries for Mike but Emily was able to get her all time favorite sweet potato fries and I got to try out more vegetarian fare like grilled tofu avocado sandwich on 9 grain wheat bread and the sesame tofu salad with crispy rice noodles and sesame vinaigrette.

The walk from Emily's house to campus is about 1.5 miles.  Unfortunately for her the engineering buildings are closer to the north side of the campus and she enters from the south side.  We learned all this when Emily gave us the tour after we ate our meal Saturday night.  Here are the campus landmarks we saw:

Amazon Brick and Mortar Store- right next to the campus bookstore.   This is the Amazon drop off location where students can have their Amazon orders delivered.

Sather Gate

Sather Tower or the 'Campanile'

A Concrete Canoe- This was Berkeley's contribution to the concrete canoe races that Emily participated in at SIUC as an undergrad.  Note:  they even painted the inside of their canoe.  

Davis Hall -where GSI (Graduate Student Instructor) Emily Peterson will have her office hours in an office she shares with other GSI's of the Introduction to Environmental Engineering Course.    

On the one and one half mile walk back to Emily's house, Mike suggested that the first order of business Sunday morning should be to buy Emily a bike.  She agreed one would probably come in handy so we walked to a nearby bike store on Sunday and purchased a used bike.  

Sunday night Emily drove us to our hotel in Oakland where we could catch an airport shuttle on Monday morning.  After nearly a week on the road and in different hotels every night we were ready to get back home.  Nevertheless, it was worth the trip to get to see Emily's new home, roommates and school.  We could see she was all set to have a great school year.