Things to do / Travel Guide
January
Along the coastline of the Monterey Peninsula you can have a whale of a time at the Whale Fest. This event includes whale-watching excursions and there's also whale-related paraphernalia on sale at the stalls of local merchants.
February
One of the biggest events in San Francisco every year is the Chinese New Year Festival & Parade, the largest of its kind in the United States. Features of this event include a Golden Dragon parade, street fairs, and lots and lots of Chinese and Asian food.
In Napa Valley there is the Mustard Festival, which celebrates the harvest of the yellow-petalled mustard flowers. The Mustard Festival starts in February and runs into March for about six weeks and features a wine auction, a recipe contest, and lots of garlicky food, garlic- and mustard-flavored ice cream, and chocolates. Ready for your date?
March
Ever year in March in San Francisco there is the San Francisco International Film Festival which screens first-run and more independent films. In addition, the San Francisco International Film Festival is the oldest continuously-running film festival in the United States, and it takes place at a number of venues across the city. Tickets are reasonably priced, and all films that are screened are open to members of the general public.
April
Every year in April the Sonoma Valley Film Festival, which is locally called “Cinema Epicuria,” sets off to celebrate the magic of independent film making. You will find little art house movies screened here rather than the latest Hollywood blockbuster .
May
Every year, on the third Sunday in May, there is the Bay to Breakers Foot Race in San Francisco. This event is one of the most popular civic events in the state of California. At the Bay to Breakers Foot Race, thousands of participants show up dressed in crazy, decorated costume to run from the Embarcadero to the Golden Gate Park. It's great for “people watching” if you're not into the physical exhaustion of running.
In Paso Robles, during the third weekend of the merry month of May there is the Paso Robles Wine Festival. Once a small, neighborly, local event, the Paso Robles Wine Festival has become the largest outdoor wine tasting event in the Golden State. Running for three days, the Paso Robles Wine Festival features many wine tastings (enough to make your head spin), as well as a golf tournament, a 5K run, and a 10K bike ride. There are also live music concerts and a big festival held in the city park in beautiful downtown Paso Robles.
Down in the Mission District of San Francisco during Memorial Day Weekend there is Carnival. Carnival is marked by two days of parades, samba singers, dancers, and parties all along Mission Street all the way down to 14th Street near Harrison Street. Just like the very well-attended event in Rio, more than half a million people come down to the Mission District to watch the largest annual event in San Francisco.
June
Every year in late June in San Francisco, usually on a Sunday, there is the world famous Gay Pride Parade, which works its way though the Castro District and down Market Street. This event brings people from all over the country and the world to wave their rainbow flags.
July
Gilroy is the garlic capital of the world, and to celebrate they throw the Gilroy Garlic Festival the last full weekend in July. The event features a gourmet food fair with more than 85 booths serving garlicky food from almost every ethnic background, plus close to 100 arts, crafts, and entertainment booths. These events are great fun as nowhere else in this region can you get artichoke ice cream, artichoke burritos, fried artichokes, garlic ice cream, and garlic chewing gum (stock up for your next date). There are cooking contests, musical bands, high school cheerleader shows, booths selling trinkets, cotton candy, lemonade, clowns, guys on stilts, car shows, and artichoke sculpture contests.
Starting in July, the wine country of California hosts the Wine Country Film Festival. This event, hosted in both Napa Valley and Sonoma County, usually celebrates smaller independent films sometimes with a particular focus on foreign films.
August
In the town of Salinas, California, there is the Steinbeck Festival, dedicated to celebrating “all things Steinbeck.” This includes tours of areas he wrote about in his various novels as well as lectures, workshops, and public readings by experts of Steinbeck's writing.
Family fun comes to Sonoma County in August when the Windsor Summer Nights on the Green presents Moonlight Movie Classics. At dusk, classic movies are projected onto the big screen and, prior to the start of the classic movie, there is also musical entertainment which starts at 5:30. This event is free.
September
During Labor Day weekend there is the Sausalito Art Festival, which features more than 180 musicians and artists from around the Bay Area. The Sausalito Arts Festival includes lots of locally-made art as well as all sorts of music, like jazz, rock, classical, and blues. The festival also features many different food booths that serve a wide variety of international cuisine styles with wines shipped in from the wineries of Napa Valley and Sonoma County.
In mid-September, there is the Monterey Jazz Festival. This three-day event is possibly the oldest jazz festival in the world, and routinely features top names in jazz, such as Chuck Mangione.
October
In Pismo Beach there is the annual Clam Festival, which is held every year in October at the Pismo Beach Pier. The Clam Festival features a clam chowder cook-off and a sand-castle building contest, as well as a sand sculpture contest and, the big grand finale, the Miss Pismo Beach beauty pageant.
In October there is the always popular Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival in Half Moon Bay. The Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival features the quintessentially American pie-eating contest, a pumpkin-carving competition, pumpkin themed arts and crafts, and a Great Pumpkin parade. The big highlight of the event is the Giant Pumpkin weigh-in; people come down from the hills for that one.
December
In the town of Santa Cruz there is a big New Years Eve event called the “First Night Santa Cruz.”
|
|
|