Jack and I took a short trip up to Sacramento last week where the California Newspaper Publishers Association hosted its quarterly meeting Friday.

Having visited Sacramento for these meetings in many past years, as well as more recently for the California Press Association, I have become enamoured with the city and thought of this as a vacation.

Jack’s first visit occurred when the airport shuttle dropped us at our hotel Thursday afternoon. I was excited to share this beautiful city with him. He felt less enthusiastic, having worked so many years in the exhausting legal field of games lawyers and politicians play. But I knew this city held much history and old architecture, which both of us enjoy in a vacation.

A free afternoon allowed us to do that, visiting such places as the historic basilica-styled Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, built in 1889 and seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento. We toured the Capitol building, modeled after D.C.’s, visiting the various floors in both the older and newer sections. We looked down on the Assembly and Senate  chambers, neither group being in session.

The Capitol grounds spread across acres of grass, roses and meandering sidewalks where joggers and walkers moved freely under the shady magnolias, citrus trees and current colors of autumn.

After Friday’s all-day sessions (and Jack even attended one), we moved our belongings to Old Town at the Delta King Hotel, a riverboat now stationary on the Sacramento River.  In 2008, I fell in love with this old boat when it harbored another CNPA quarterly meeting.

Late the next morning, the shuttle took us back to the airport and our short visit soon ended.

Nonetheless, between visiting old sites, seeing old newspaper friends and eating at great old places — like an Irish pub downtown and on the riverboat in Old Town — Jack and I enjoyed our favorite kind of vacation.

Becky Clark, Editor