April 15, Oakland

We met a woman from Oakland while on the Castro walking tour who told us that Oakland was not safe and that we should "never walk" while in Oakland. As you can imagine she had us just a little paranoid as we headed to the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station three blocks from our hotel, to catch the train to Oakland. We knew that we were very safe on the San Francisco side but had no idea what awaited us on the Oakland side.

Needless to say, when we reached our stop in Oakland, we were not mugged, or approached by anyone! We very easily found a cab that took us the 1.5 miles to our hotel. We chose this hotel because it is within walking distance to the Oakland Coliseum, home of the Oakland Athletics. Both the cab driver and the hotel staff told us that it is perfectly safe to walk to the ballpark and walk we did!

The Oakland Coliseum is an old park in a rather run down area of the city, but that didn't take anything away from the great atmosphere inside the park. We had excellent seats, the pitching was great, but unfortunately the home team lost in extra innings. We walked back to our hotel...safe and sound.