LowestTravelDeals.com provides
any kind of Oakland lodging from luxury 5-star hotels to affordable
B&B's and discount motels. Our search system provides a wide
variety of options to provide you with the best Oakland hotel
deals and rates in a secure and instant transaction. We guarantee
you will find the right Oakland accommodation that fits your travel
vacation.
OAKLAND , the workhorse of the
Bay Area, is one of the largest ports on the west coast. It has
also been the breeding ground of political movements
. In the Sixties, the city's population found a voice through
the militant Black Panthers, and in the Seventies the Symbionese
Liberation Army, kidnappers of heiress Patty Hearst, obtained
a ransom of free food for the city's poor. It's not all hard graft,
though: the climate is often sunny and mild when San Francisco
is cold and dreary, and there's great hiking in the redwood-and
eucalyptus-covered hills above the city.
The major interest to the tourist trade being the
waterfront Jack London Square, an aseptic collection of national
chains that have nothing to do with the writer. At the far eastern
end of the promenade, however, you will find Heinhold's
First and Last Chance Saloon , a slanting tiny bar built
in 1883 from the hull of a whaling ship. Jack London really did
drink here, and the collection of yellowed portraits of him on
the wall are the only genuine thing about the writer you'll find
on the square. A half-mile north up Broadway from the waterfront,
Oakland's restored downtown is anchored by chain stores and the
gargantuan open-air City Center complex of offices
and fast food. Beside it, at Broadway and 14th Street, the massive
green space of Frank Ogawa Plaza offers a good
place for people-watching. A bit east on Tenth and Oak streets,
the Oakland Museum of California ($6; WedSat
10am5pm, Sun noon5pm) has a good exhibit of California history,
including the Beat Generation.
Gertrude Stein , who was born in
Oakland at around the same time as the macho and adventurous London,
is barely commemorated perhaps because she wrote "what was
the use of me having come from Oakland, it was not natural for
me to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything
if I like but not there, there is no there there " a quote
which has haunted Oakland ever since. Nonetheless, the majority
of Oakland residents are proud of their city, and would argue
that there is indeed a there there, notably in the small and trendy
communities of Rockridge and Piedmont
Avenue , and the lively Grand Avenue neighborhood.
Joaquin Miller Park , the most
easily accessible of Oakland's hilltop parks, stands above East
Oakland. It was once home to the "Poet of the Sierras,"
Joaquin Miller, who made his name playing the eccentric frontier
American in the salons of 1870s London. His poems weren't exactly
acclaimed (his greatest poetic achievement was rhyming "teeth"
with "Goethe"), but his prose account of the time he
spent with the Modoc Indians near Mount Shasta remains invaluable.
His house, a small white cabin called The Abbey
, still survives, as do the thousands of trees he planted.
