bypassing the bay

We drove up to Sonoma County via the East Bay, the 880 freeway that goes through Oakland. I liked the idea of stopping in Berkeley for lunch, but neither of us were too familiar with the area. We took the exit for UC Berkeley and found ourselves in a rough looking neighborhood. I turned left at the first big intersection and we soon found ourselves in the city of Albany.

Downtown Albany looked agreeable enough with lots of great old neon signs and a Thai restaurant on every block. We parked and walked down an inviting street that led to a vegetarian-friendly Thai restaurant. We walked in and it smelled heavenly. Our meals were excellent. That was a good thing since I was starving.

After lunch we got back on the freeway, which shortly turned into the Richmond Bridge. I'd never taken this bridge, although I'd had dreams throughout my life of taking insanely long, scary suspension bridges. This one was very long and a little bit scary. It went up, then down, then up again, then down again, and then turned north into Marin County, passing by the San Quentin prison.