<p>Hi,
I live on the East Coast and am planning on visiting Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA and USC law schools in two weeks. I am flying into SFO on Tuesday 11am and leaving from SFO Saturday evening at 8pm. Can folks who live in CA or others who have visited these schools, offer advice on how best to plan this trip?
I was thinking of visiting Berkeley on Tuesday, staying in SF or Berkeley on Tuesday night and visiting Stanford on Wednesday. I would then make my way to LA on Wednesday afternoon. I am open to staying somewhere halfway to LA or pushing on till LA. I'll see USC on Thursday and UCLA on Friday and then make my way back to SF for a Saturday evening flight.
Any suggestions on driving routes/accommodations would be much appreciated. I am a big fan of the Big Sur area and would prefer to stay in outside of LA if possible. Not looking to spend more than $150 - 200/night on a hotel.
Thanks very much!
Sasha</p>
<p>Use [Sigalert.com</a> Fairfax County Traffic Map](<a href=“http://www.sigalert.com%5DSigalert.com”>http://www.sigalert.com) to check traffic conditions.</p>
<p>Suggest having your first hotel be near BART ( [BART</a> - Bay Area Rapid Transit](<a href=“http://www.bart.gov%5DBART”>http://www.bart.gov) ) so that you can see Berkeley and San Francisco (city) without dealing with parking hassles and expense. Then visit Stanford. Then go to Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Pick up the rental car on either the Stanford day (if you do not want to take Caltrain ( [url=<a href=“http://www.caltrain.com%5Dcaltrain.com%5B/url”>http://www.caltrain.com]caltrain.com[/url</a>] )) or when you leave for Los Angeles.</p>
<p>However, your schedule does look tight with little room for error in case of delays (airline, traffic, etc.). How long are you expecting to see each campus?</p>
<p>Thanks for your message, ucbalumnus. I was planning on spending 4-5 hours at each campus. I had initially thought of picking up a car from SFO and driving straight to Berkeley. After seeing campus, I could check in at a hotel nearby (have heard good things about Berkeley City Club) and just soak in Berkeley for the rest of the day, as that is the school I am most interested in. Planned to head to Stanford early (9am) on Wednesday and leave for LA after lunch around 1pm. Perhaps it may be best to have a hotel near BART and pick up the car the next day before driving to Stanford and on to LA. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, my schedule is tight! Am keen to see all 4 schools since I will be flying across the country!</p>
<p>You can take BART from SFO or Oakland airports direct to Berkeley. Get off at the Downtown Berkeley station which is only a block west of campus. You can get a cab to your hotel in Berkeley. I recommend the Hotel Durant…nice, quaint and close to campus.</p>
<p>Then, I would take BART/Air BART shuttle to the Oakland Airport and pick up a rental car and drive south across the Dumbarton bridge to Stanford.</p>
<p>Wonderful! Thank you very much for your suggestions. Any thoughts on where to spend the night on the way to LA and where to stay in LA?</p>
<p>There may be rental car pickup locations not at airports that may be more convenient if you pick up a rental car in the middle of your trip.</p>
<p>Driving from Berkeley to Stanford on a weekday morning could be a rather miserable drive in heavy commute traffic (check the sigalert.com web site on weekday mornings, adjusting for time zones). The alternative of BART from Berkeley to Millbrae, then Caltrain to Palo Alto is not that fast, however (check the schedules on bart.gov and caltrain.com).</p>
<p>Another possibility is, after visiting Berkeley, head to a hotel near Stanford in the evening (either by picking up a rental car in Berkeley, with less traffic on the drive, or by train if you do not want to deal with driving and parking), so that you can visit Stanford in the morning without dealing with the commute traffic.</p>
<p>The Stanford campus is quite large; there are lots of parking lots, but a lot of them require campus parking permits, so read signs carefully.</p>
<p>The other consideration is whether your flight schedule is optimal. Would it be possible to change your flights to something like:</p>
<p>??? -> OAK or SFO tuesday morning
visit Berkeley tuesday afternoon
visit Stanford wednesday
SJC or SFO -> LGB or LAX wednesday evening or thursday morning (or drive)
visit USC thursday
visit UCLA friday
LAX or LGB -> ??? saturday or sunday</p>
<p>Note that SFO tends to have lots of flight delays.</p>
<p>Have you already bought your ticket? It would be much more efficient to fly into Oakland (or San Jose) and out of LAX. (There are often weather delays into or out of SFO, but that would be okay too). You mentioned you like the Big Sur area – stopping in Big Sur will entail a detour. Big Sur is two to two and a half hours from Stanford (without traffic) and it’s another 7 hours or so to L.A. from Big Sur. Taking the 5 Freeway is faster – about 6 to 6 and 1/2 hours from Stanford (or from Berkeley, for that matter) – but it is much uglier.</p>
<p>You might be tempted to try the coastal route on Friday night or Saturday morning from L.A. back up to SFO. You should know that the 101 Fwy from L.A. North on Friday night or Saturday morning is a complete nightmare – lots of people going from L.A. to Santa Barbara area and the fwy is way overcrowded on that stretch. You’d be much better off spending the day in Santa Monica or Malibu and flying out of LAX than trying to make a flight out of the Bay Area. Again, taking the 5 fwy from LA back up to SFO will be by far the fastest route, but it is an ugly dismal drive.</p>
<p>If you still have flexibility, it might be better to start in L.A. and end up in the Bay Area. (Fly into LA and out of Oakland/San Jose/ SFO).</p>
<p>I don’t know how well you know L.A., but you should be careful in trying to find a hotel under $200 a night. That’s low for L.A., and there are lots of sketchy neighborhoods that you wouldn’t want to stay in that aren’t too far from nice neighborhoods (and therefore might look tempting on the map). You should try to find a hotel in Santa Monica, Westwood, Century City, Beverly Hills or West Hollywood, all of which are nice areas and are close to UCLA and convenient to USC.</p>
<p>UCLA probably has some arrangement for reduced rates at the W Hotel in Westwood. You should ask the law school. </p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>P.S. I didn’t see UCBAlum’s last post before posting mine. Lots of the same thoughts!</p>
<p>Unfortunately, my flights are booked and nonrefundable. It won’t be possible to change my flight schedule at this point. Thanks for the heads up about SFO flight delays</p>
<p>You should look at the law school websites to find hotels that have discounted rates for visitors to the campus. I’m sure each school has places with negotiated discount rates. As I’m sure you know, you are much better off choosing a place near UCLA than USC for the LA portion of the trip, and thus should explore the places recommeded by UCLA.</p>
<p>Thanks for your note, nottelling. I know Northern CA much better than LA. Will def have a word with UCLA and see what they recommend. I also appreciate you pointing out driving routes and other parts of LA that I should have a look at. I’m considering just returning the rental at LAX and taking a flight home from there to NYC. Might save a lot of hassle to just get a one-way ticket home. </p>
<p>Are there any places midway between LA and SF where you might recommend staying overnight?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it seems like everything the law school recommends is either booked out or exorbitantly expensive! Any suggestions for other towns outside the LA area that would give a better value for money?</p>
<p>As far as places midway between LA and SF to stay, I guess it depends on why you would want to stay someplace between the two. If you are looking for sightseeing opportunities, staying someplace inbetween is going to add a lot of time to your trip and probably won’t be worth it. If you are just looking to break up the drive, you are much better off just powering through on the 5 fwy.</p>
<p>If someone from L.A. were taking a nice leisurely trip up the coast and wanted to stay somewhere halfway in between L.A. and SF, they’d probably stay in a little beach town called Cambria, but it is out of the way and staying there would not save you any time. It is a quaint romantic little beach town with bed and breakfasts, etc., and it would be weird to use it as a stopping point when you are in a hurry. Also about half way in between L.A. and S.F. on the 101 (or more scenic route than the 5) is Paso Robles, which is a newer wine country area, but again I can’t imagine stopping and staying there on the way to L.A. if you weren’t interested in wine tasting, etc. And if you haven’t spent much time in California, it wouldn’t be top of the list as a tourist destination with all the riches of the Bay Area or L.A. area to explore. Closer to L.A., Santa Barbara is gorgeous but again it is somewhat out of the way and you are not saving any time.</p>
<p>There is literally NOTHING half way between SF and L.A. on the 5 fwy. (Sorry to everyone I just offended). There might be a Motel 6 next to a McDonald’s in Buttonwillow, but that’s about it. (Buttonwillow is a town which consists entirely of a rest stop, and for some reason, mentioning it is an inside joke to the 20 million Californians.) There is nothing to see, and no reason to stop. </p>
<p>Stopping at any of these places for the night will mean that you will hit horrendous rush hour traffic the next morning. It’s not worth it! </p>
<p>I’m not sure of places to stay in the LA area/outskirts with less expensive rates. If I were you, I’d probably just play around on Hotels.com or priceline and try to find a deal in a nice area of L.A., and then check reviews on Trip Advisor. (Areas mentioned in previous post are safe bets). Or perhaps go on travel sites like Frommers or Fodors and see what the budget recommendations are for hotels in L.A.</p>
<p>Check to see whether the change fee and fare difference to change your non-refundable ticket is less than buying a one way ticket from LAX or LGB back home.</p>
<p>
Only America’s farm stand…
Harris Ranch and Pea Soup Andersen’s (stop here and get the Traveler’s special). :-)</p>
<p>Better value for money—try a hotel stay in Glendale or Pasadena. Pull up Pasadena in Tripadvisor.com and any of the top 10 should be fine. The Howard Johnsons across from PCC is cheap and close to the freeway. Plenty of people also LOVE the Saga Motor Hotel(which runs about $85). Closer to UCLA (but further from USC) is the Tangerine in Burbank.
<a href=“http://www.tangerinehotel.com%5B/url%5D”>www.tangerinehotel.com</a>
Just keep sigalert.com handy and be aware that travel times can stretch out substantially due to traffic patterns.</p>
<p>You could always look up hotels through hotwire or priceline. Then you use a website such as betterbidding to figure out what the mystery hotels are. Weekday rates should be cheaper and they give bidding advice. Use tripadvisor to look up reviews of the hotels to make sure you don’t end up in a sketchy neighborhood.</p>
<p>We visited CalPoly and CalTech over summer. Motel6 in San Luis Obispo was like $80 dollars or more on a weekday! But there famers market was amazing. We also got to visit Morro Bay beautiful and Pismo Beach. This is the 101 drive to LA which is definitely abotu 2 hours longer but it goes along the coast. The I5 route to LA is all farm land and rest areas with gas stations if anything.</p>
<p>My son is looking at the exact same schools as you. But we actually got a better vibe at CalPoly then Berkeley. Wife and son fell in love in CalTech and CalPoly. Berkeley is meh. You might be turned off by the area it is a bit gritty. Avoid the park across the street a lot of homeless. Where as Stanford is like a resort! There tours are super packed! and break up into multiple groups, hard to ask questions etc, not very personal. But then again do they really have to sell you.</p>
<p>Yeah but squeezing 4 schools into 5 days might be hard. Since you are using up Tuesday on your arrival since you’re here at 11 am. If you came early and knocked Berkeley out of the way you probably would have had more time.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your input. Your help has been much appreciated! I’ll be heading out to the West Coast tomorrow, and will keep all your suggestions in mind!</p>
<p>Have a safe trip. Don’t hesitate to stop into a mcdonalds or starbucks whenever you need free wifi to look something up on your computer. Yelp reviews are sort of helpful when trying to find a place to eat. They’re fairly accurate in CA.</p>
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<p>Yeah, the CA Central Valley area feeds a good potion of the world. I’m looking for any excuse to head up the CA Grapevine to go HR. Maybe I should become a truck driver. But for someone (the OP) whose time is heavily under constraints, probably not.</p>
<p>“There is literally NOTHING half way between SF and L.A. on the 5 fwy.*”</p>
<p>Hey! </p>
<p>We usually stop around the grapevine or in Bakersfield if we start out late and don’t want to drive through the night. Hard to get something "good"to eat , so plan on stopping by 8. Check chowhound ( better than yelp) California, and search Modesto, Tracy, Merced, or Stockton. There is a Chipotle where the grapevine starts, which is nice to say you’ve tried if aren’t from 'round these parts.</p>
<p>I-5 to L.A…
<a href=“http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/858577[/url]”>http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/858577</a>
Or</p>
<p>I-5 Corridor?
<a href=“http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/868494[/url]”>http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/868494</a></p>
<p>" There is another alternative if it isn’t too late (or for your return), especially from the East Bay: Route 99! if you take 99 all types of alternatives open up. Check Fresno, Modesto, Bakersfield, Merced, Turlock (where there is a new place I am dying to hear reports on called LaMo: hope to get there soon for what is reported to be the best Cal-Mexican food in the Central Valley…), Atwater… Depending on where you live in the East Bay the 99 route will only be about 30 minutes longer than I-5 would be without construction, no major road work right now that I am aware of (checking with Caltrans is always a good idea), and the food opportunities are MUCH better…(and if you want the best of both worlds, though it will add a bit of time onto your drive, take the 5 South to Santa Nella and then cut over to 99 via Gustine, which of course takes you right by Wolfsen’s… :-))"</p>