4. Benicia is a great Vallejo side-trip with a beautiful waterfront. To get to Benicia from Vallejo, you can catch Benicia Transit at the corner of York and Marin, or bike the surface streets (check the Bay Trail Map for waterside routes). Within a short time, you will be downtown, where shops and restaurants along East 1st Street, once brothels and taverns, now offer antiques and good food. Check out the Camellia Tea Room, with its Victorian setting, In the Company of Wolves (a coffee house), Petals (for American Asian cuisine), First Street Cafe, and, near the water, Shoreline Restaurant and Captain Blyther’s. The historic SP Depot has been recently moved to the waterfront here as well. The Camel Races take place here each year in July where East 1st Street meets the Strait, also known as the East 1st Street Green. This year that event is July 14th and 15th. A short distance from the waterfront and East First Street, the Camel Barn Museum in the Arsenal is the home of the Benicia Historical Museum. The army invested in camels as pack animals for a short while, and they were kept at these camel barns. Now, the barns house artifacts from Benicia’s past, presented by friendly, knowledgeable docents.

The Benicia Glass Studios are nearby, and worth a visit. If you go Monday through Friday from 10am until 4pm, you can watch the artisans draw molten glass from 2,000 degree furnaces on to the blowpipe. The master glassblower then transforms the hot molten glass into a work of art as you watch. The glass made here is well known, and is shipped form the studios to museums, galleries and fine stores throughout the world. The studios of Nourot, Smyers and Zellique (which are all in the same area) form Benicia Glass Studios, Each have showrooms that display artists prototypes, as well as seconds.

Like Vallejo, Benicia was established by General Vallejo with the help of US Lieutenant Robert Semple. They hoped the town would grow to rival the port of San Francisco, and for a while, it looked like it might. It was already the site of the Benicia Arsenal, and became the state capitol in 1853. It was also an important center of wooden shipbuilding, home to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Pacific Mail was the Bay Area’s first major ship industry, providing transportation between the Bay Area and the East Coast before the arrival of the transcontinental railroad. This is the outfit that sailed the USS Tennessee (now a shipwreck off Tennessee Valley in Marin County) between San Francisco and Panama. Benicia also attracted the shipyard of Matthew Turner, the well known shipbuilder who moved from San Francisco to Benicia in 1882, with a crew that constructed an impressive 228 vessels before closing in 1903.

Ultimately, the capitol moved to Sacramento, and the Benicia Capitol, located at the corner of East 1st and West G Streets became a State Historic Park. The Benicia Arsenal has been converted to civilian use, its restored historic buildings-turned-artists studios and businesses. Shipyards also closed as the ship building industry changed. The Matthew Turner Shipyard has become Matthew Turner Shipyard Park, a 6-acre shoreline park at the end of West 12th Street, and a California Registered Historic Landmark. You can take the Bay Trail west from the Benicia Marina for 3 miles to the Benicia State Recreation Area, passing through neighborhoods, by the old capitol and East 1st Street to Matthew Turner Shipyard Park. From here you can see the old shipyard pilings offshore, and Carquinez Regional Shoreline across the strait.

Further west, is the Benicia State Recreation Area, which offers great trails around its 438 acres of marsh and shoreline. The Carquinez Strait is the narrowest channel through which bay water flows, and its fun to watch the tides change here. South of Benicia State Recreation Area is Vallejo’s Glen Cove Marina. There are plans to open a waterfront park and renovate the Stremmel Mansion built here in the 1930s. The Glen Cove Marina, actually in Elliot Cove is the site of the Carquinez Lighthouse, barged from at the mouth of the Napa River, where it stood from 1910 until 1957, when it was decommissioned and brought here to house the Glen Cove Marina harbor master’s office. West from here is the California Maritime Academy, and beyond that is Vallejo’s waterfront.

5. Six Flags Marine World claims to be as much about roller coasters as it is about marine education, with 32 rides and 32 animal attractions, plus 10 shows. An opportunity to get next to the bottlenose dolphins is packaged as Dolphin Discovery, which includes a training session and the chance to put on a wetsuit for a shallow water meeting with the dolphins. During the walk from the car to the park entrance, you can preview the gravitational horrors of the newest rollercoaster Vertical Velocity that rockets riders straight up and down two 150 foot sky towers at speeds of 70 mph. The tamer side of Marine World offers things like the a walk through a clear, water-tight tunnel surrounded by a tropical reef with lots of sharks in "Shark Experience", a walk through a tropical atrium with 500 butterflies in "Butterfly Habitat", and a chance to ride on an elephant’s back. The shows star California Sea Lions, harbor seals, dolphins, and elephants, and there are many other animals you can visit in their homes. Baby white tigers were born here May 2, and are on view in the animal nursery. Marine World provides a shuttle service to the ferry terminal.

Whether you come to Vallejo to check out Marine World, the naval history, the expansive and historic waterfront, the vintage architecture, the taco truck, or all of the great places you can go from here, enjoy your visit to Vallejo!