Sacramento Sunday Farmers' Market

Tudor, Colonial Revival, Arts and Crafts, California Bungalow—premier examples of these classic architectural styles keep your head spinning in this elegant collection of streets (numbered streets in the 40s) in East Sacramento. Long considered one of the city’s most fashionable neighbourhoods, it makes for a delightful stroll with hints of a bygone era of elegance and privilege. Here, home owners relax on broad front porches; squint and you can almost imagine them in crisp linen suits and frilly lace dresses, sipping cool lemonades on a sultry August afternoon. Kids ride bikes on wide streets—a reminder that trams used to run through the area and needed plenty of room at turnaround points.

During the holidays, the area takes on special glow when several houses get lavishly decorated, then welcome the public during special home tours.

Consistently ranked as one of the best railroad museums in the country, the expansive California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento presents 21 meticulously restored “iron horse” locomotives, plus period-perfect railway cars, many open for one-of-a-kind walk-throughs. Incredible attention to detail—authentic china and silverware in dining cars, velvet and finery in the Pullman sleeping cars, a charmingly stubby wooden caboose—give you a sense of what it was like to travel by train before cars became king.

Numerous exhibits detail the ways that railroads shaped the lives, economy, culture, and history of the Golden State. Kids will enjoy being able to step aboard Pullman-style sleeping cars, a dining car filled with railroad china, and a replica of a railway post office. There’s even a high-speed train simulator that allow visitors to feel what it’s like to pilot a modern high-speed train. Guided tours of the museum are offered daily and special events include the “Spookomotive Train Ride“ on weekends in October and a winter holiday train ride, complete with a visit from a gift-bearing Santa, in November and December.

On spring and summer weekends (April–September), the museum offers excursion rides every hour on the popular Sacramento Southern Railroad, which chugs along the banks of the Sacramento River right through Old Sacramento. Take in the view from a first-class observation car, a closed coach, or an open-air gondola (guess which one kids like best).

The first public art museum founded in the Western United States, the Crocker Art Museum is still one of the leading museums in California today. If being the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi sounds like an outdated claim to fame, forget about it. This is one vibrant, eclectic, fascinating and altogether of-the-moment museum, with an unparalleled collection of both historic and contemporary art.

First, the historic. The original Crocker Museum was a gift to the city, a move by Margaret Crocker, heiress of the fabulously wealthy Crocker family, to let the people of Sacramento have permanent access to her family’s astounding personal galleries, housed in an Italianate mansion a pleasant stroll from the Capitol Building. The elegant building, as well as the adjacent family home, still showcase that collection, which includes European works as well as the Californian collection, now considered one of the finest of its kind in the United States. 

Over time, the collection grew to include an amazing wealth of international ceramics, sculpture and works by contemporary California artists, many of whom taught at nearby University of California at Davis. Fast forward to 2010, when a dramatic new gallery space, the ultra-modern Teel Family Pavilion, was added to the 1800s-era Crocker compound, a bold and visually stunning move. These wide open, naturally lit gallery spaces have become the home of the contemporary collection, and they are your chance to see original works by some of the state’s finest artists. Here, experience black-and-white originals by the celebrated photographer Ansel Adams—the difference of seeing his real images of Yosemite’s Half Dome versus a poster replica is breathtaking. Over there are Wayne Thiebaud’s whimsical pie paintings of pie, over here sculptor Roy Arneson’s wacky ceramic head. Altogether, the Crocker, old and new, creates one of the best experiences in California’s surprising capital city.