Berkeley – Roamancing San Francisco Part V

To finish off my trip in San Francisco, Chance took me for a tour of Berkeley. As an alumnus of UC Berkeley, Chance couldn’t wait to show me around campus. We met up with his friend, Dan*, also an alum, and started off walking around campus and exploring their old classrooms. Neither Chance nor Dan had been back since they had graduated, so it was quite the trip down memory lane. I had flashbacks myself when we headed to Doe Memorial Library. The grand building and beautiful reading room made me feel like I was back at the University of Bristol, which is where Chance and I met, incidentally.

We wandered over to the Jubilee Bench, a semi-circle bench donated by the class of ’87. Also known as the “whisper bench”, we could hear each other’s whispers at both ends of the bench. We got a kick out of telling secrets across to each other.

Afterwards, we went off in search of a T-Rex skeleton in the Valley Life Sciences Building. We had trouble locating it, but all we had to do was say the words “dinosaur skeleton.” Someone overheard us and knew exactly what we were talking about, and pointed us in the right direction. The skeleton was gigantic; all I could think was how much I would not have wanted to run into a live one!

Possibly due to being in the presence of the T-rex, we were feeling hungry, so we headed over to Cheese Board, a favourite of Chance and Dan’s during their time in Berkeley. At first, I was put off that the pizzeria only served one of their own creations each day, but the queue snaking out the door and down the street was promising. We got a pizza to split between the three of us, and sat on the boulevard to enjoy it. I wasn’t disappointed. On the menu that day was corn, red bell peppers, feta cheese, mozzarella, cilantro and garlic olive oil. It made for a delicious pizza.

With our bellies full, we drove up to the Lawrence Hall of Science in the Berkeley Hills. The drive up was quite nerve-wracking, as we weren’t sure if Dan’s car would make it up the hills, but it persevered and we made it in the end. We were rewarded with a spectacular view of the bay area and spent our time pointing out the different landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island.

We finished the day off at the Berkeley Pier. It was chilly by the water, and the pier was much longer than it looked, but we didn’t stop until we reached the end. We could see the rest of the pier extending out towards the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. Other than a few optimistic fishermen, we were alone out there. We sat out there for awhile, just three recent grads (well, one almost graduated) contemplating life.

*name has been changed

This is the final part in Megan’s Roamancing San Francisco series. Read Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.