Stonegate House

This is our primary residence, and definitely lived in. Large, at over 3,000 sq ft. The home is located at the end of a cul de sac, and one house away from agricultural fields. You may find walnut shells in the street that the intelligent crows drop to crack the nuts.

The home has a big garage, partly filled with storage, but enough room left over for one car to park. There are a actually 5 bedrooms plus a billiards/craft room, but we like to close off two of the rooms. The rooms have one California King bed, one Queen bed, and The Fort, a kind of bunk bed on top and full bed below. Each of the three bathrooms has a shower with tub, and the master bedroom upstairs has a separate jet tub next to walk-in shower. Kitchen area has refrigerator with french doors (plus an exta similar fridge in the garage). Oven and stove are gas, although we often use the large toaster oven for baking or cooking.

There is a hot tub in the fairly large backyard, an assortment of outdoor furniture, and an old grill to barbecue. A gardener comes weekly, and a cleaning service biweekly.

About the location

Davis is a quintessential college town, with a close association of the community with the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), a well-respected university with over 30,000 undergraduate students and top notch graduate programs, medical school, and veterinary program.

Our house is near the edge of the town, but still just 2.6 miles from the Memorial Union at UC Davis, and 4 miles from the Amtak station in Davis. For the United States, public transit is fairly good, in part due to the bus system started by UC Davis undergraduates decades ago,Unitrans, which the entire community uses. Originally used double decker London buses, with one or two in use today. There is a Yolo County bus that travels to Sacramento and Woodland, including the Sacramento International airport. Capitol Corridor (Amtrak commuter train) takes 18 minutes from the Davis station to Sacramento Station, and just under 2 hours to Oakland. San Francisco requires a transfer to Bart of the Ferry for a total time of just over 2 hours.

The closest bus stop is 1/2 mile away, and there is a small shopping center with a local grocery store, Dollar Tree, and restaurants (Boba, PIzza, Sushi, Brewery). Davis is very bicycle friendly (for the USA), and even has the House of Fame and Bicycle Museum. There are very nice parks, both locally and regionally.

Having the university here means that there is a wide range of restaurants, a fantastic farmer’s market, world-class concerts (including at the Mondavi Center), museums (e.g. Manetti Shrem, which is free), an arboretum, and lectures. There are churches, a synagogue, an Islamic Center, and an International House. We may be able to arrange access to the local communicty club with tennis and swimming, Stonegate, for longer exchanges, and there are several public tennis courts and pools in Davis.

We mainly use Sacramento International Airort (closest) or San Francisco International Airport (cheapest). Without traffic, it takes 25 minutes to drive to the Sacramento airport, 1 1/2 hours to San Francisco and Oakland airports, and 2 hours to San Jose airport, all of them international airports.

Within 2-3 hours drive you can reach the coast (e.g. Bodega Bay), the mountains (Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta), Reno, and Santa Cruz (check out the classic beach boardwalk), to name a few. Yosemite is 3 hours or so away by car. Southern California is a good 8-10 hours by car, and you can take the train, but it is a long albeit pretty trip.

Conditions of exchange

Facilities

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