Food, history and glorious trees: A weekend in Sacramento

Be honest: If you were asked to list cities you’d want to visit in our great state, you’d probably go through at least 10 before you got to Sacramento, our capital. San Diego would be on it since it has beaches. Napa would be near the top because of the wine. But Sacramento? What does it have? Politicians?

Well, believe it or not, even the politicians didn’t choose Sacramento at first. When California became the 31st state on Sept. 9, 1850, its government designated San Jose as the official capital. The state capital moved twice more, to Vallejo and Benicia, before they finally settled on Sacramento in 1854. Construction of the capitol building as we know it today wasn’t completed until 20 years later.

Despite visiting many other state capitals, I hadn’t been to Sacramento. It wasn’t on my list. But some inexplicable force recently drew me to the town.

OK, maybe it was “Lady Bird.”

You, too, might have been clued into Sacramento’s charms by filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s 2017 solo directorial debut film. The loosely autobiographical coming-of-age story was Gerwig’s love letter to her hometown, and Sacramento was central to the titular character’s arc. At the beginning of the film, Lady Bird yearns to move out to a city with “culture.” But when she ends up in New York in the final scene, she admits in a touching phone call to her mother, “Did you feel emotional the first time that you drove in Sacramento? I did, and I wanted to tell you.”

So I made my first pilgrimage, booking the 1½-hour flight from L.A. to explore it for a weekend.

I admit that it wasn’t without some initial hesitation. Remembering a Stephen Colbert interview with “Lady Bird” star Saoirse Ronan didn’t help. The late-night host quipped, “I’ve been to Sacramento before. … I’m aware of how boring it is.”

But I knew Colbert was wrong as soon as I landed at Sacramento’s airport. It gleamed of glass and shimmered of chrome. New, modern and sleek, with a gigantic sculpture of a leaping red hare above baggage claim, it was one of the most impressive airports I’ve seen in the U.S. — and a sign that this city was going to surprise me.

And it did.

In that weekend, not only did I discover that Sacramento wasn’t boring, it’s got a little bit of everything. In downtown, I saw streetcars gliding along an avenue shaded under a canopy of trees. Other parts of town felt like walking in New York’s Central Park or Washington, D.C.’s Pennsylvania Avenue. Old Sacramento gave off both the boozy vibes of Bourbon Street and the cowboy vibes of Tombstone, Ariz. And when I saw the stately homes in East Sacramento, I fantasized about moving into one.

There’s also the fact that Sacramento has history in spades. It boasts 32 museums, including the Crocker Art Museum, the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi. The food scene is equally vibrant, with 15 restaurants featured in the Michelin Guide, two of which are starred. It helps that Sacramento is surrounded by 1.5 million acres of agricultural land. In fact, in 2012, the city began its Farm-to-Fork Festival to highlight the symbiosis between local farmers and the region’s top chefs.

So, like Lady Bird, I did feel a little bit emotional the first time I drove in Sacramento. It’s an unexpectedly charming town that I wholly underestimated. And it’ll charm you too. Start with these eight places that can be experienced during one weekend this fall in California’s most underrated big city.