Living in Livermore
What it is like to live in Livermore, California — shopping, getting around, and where to go nearby, for whoever comes next.
I lived in Livermore, California, for an internship.
It turned out to be a genuinely good place to live. A lot of people pass through here on internships, so I wanted to write down what daily life was actually like — partly for whoever comes next, and partly to keep the memory for myself.
The town
Livermore is a suburb in Northern California. There is open country all around it, it feels safe, and it is an easy place to live. It is also wine country: the vineyards run for miles, and they are beautiful.
And the weather is superb. This is Northern California, so through the summer it is sunny almost every day and it essentially never rains. I do not think we canceled a single plan because of the forecast.
- Where
- East Bay, Northern California
- San Francisco / Silicon Valley
- 1–1.5 hours by car
- Yosemite
- 3–4 hours by car
- Nearest BART
- Dublin/Pleasanton, the next town over
What makes the location work is how close the big places are. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are an hour to an hour and a half away by car. BART, the regional rail, reaches the next town over, so you can get to the airport, Oakland or San Francisco without a car.
For a suburb, the shopping is more than adequate. There is a Trader Joe's just off downtown, Lucky and Safeway for groceries, and Walmart and Target for everything else — all about ten minutes away.
Can you live here without a car?
Short answer: yes. Livermore has buses, and from most parts of town you can get to a supermarket or downtown easily enough. There is almost no traffic, so they run close to schedule — roughly every twenty minutes on weekdays. For a short stay without a car, you will be fine. Uber is there when you need it, and depending on where you are staying, there may well be shops within walking distance.
That said, a car is better, as it is in any American town. If you can rent one, do.
Downtown
Downtown is the stretch around First Street: cafés, restaurants and shops, and on weekends it fills up with people from the town.
While my family was staying with me we came down here most evenings, to walk around or to eat. It is where we went most, and it is what I remember best.
There is a fountain and a small plaza at the intersection. Every day there were children tearing around the water, getting completely soaked and having a wonderful time. The benches near the fountain are a good place to sit for a while.
By early evening the benches start filling up — people with dogs, people who look like they have just finished work, children with ice cream. Doing nothing in particular and watching that until the sun went down was time well spent.
Eating downtown
- First Street Alehouse — Big American burgers and a long list of beers.
- Sauced BBQ & Spirits — Ribs, steak, that sort of thing. Very good.
- 1st Treat Yogurt — Frozen yogurt you pour yourself, then pick your own toppings. You control the size too, which children enjoy enormously.
But the place we owed the most to is an ice cream shop called Meadowlark Dairy. It is a local institution — there is a line on weekends — and the outdoor tables always have someone at them. You can tell it is loved.
The flavors are good, but the real point is that it is cheap and it is enormous. A small was $3.50 and a large $4 while I was there. A large is probably too much for one person, so it is worth sharing.
We went back constantly.
Parking, if you drive
There are several big free parking structures right beside the middle of downtown, less than a minute's walk away. There is always room.
The outlets
Ten or fifteen minutes away by car is a large outlet mall called San Francisco Premium Outlets. Despite the name, it is a great deal closer to Livermore than it is to San Francisco. Buses go there too, so you can manage it without a car.
If you like shopping, it is obviously the place to go — American brands like New Balance and Converse at outlet prices. There is a Disney outlet as well, which is a good time if you or your children are so inclined.
But it is worth going for the food even if you have no intention of buying anything. There are so many restaurants, bakeries and cafés that you are certain to find something you like. There is Japanese food too.
There are plenty of EV chargers, so you can charge while you eat. We ended up there often.
Wineries
There are a lot of wineries around Livermore, most of them five to twenty minutes from the middle of town. They are beautiful, and drinking wine while looking at that view is one of the better ways to spend part of a stay here.
I took the children to Wente Vineyards. It is enormous, with a golf course attached, and the setting is spectacular. There is a restaurant looking out over it, where we had breakfast one day and lunch another.
The outdoors
Livermore is ringed by open hills, and there are rivers and a lake. There is no shortage of places to hike or picnic, but the best known is Del Valle Regional Park.
Twenty minutes by car. It is hard to believe somewhere this wild is that close to the town — coming from Tokyo, it took some getting used to.
The park is huge, but there is a parking lot not far past the entrance with the lake spread out around it. There is a beach, and you can swim, take a boat out, or fish. There are restrooms and a store, which makes it a sensible place to start from.
The hiking is enough of a climb to count as exercise, and the view from the top of the hill is superb — the children loved it. There are several barbecue areas, shaded by trees, and grilling next to the beach was as good as it sounds.
Out on the water we watched deer come down to the far shore to drink. Twenty minutes from town.
Farmers markets
There is a farmers market in Livermore on Thursdays and Sundays. Local growers and producers sell vegetables, fruit, bread and cheese, and there are always a good number of food trucks.
Thursday's is on First Street downtown and runs until about eight in the evening. It is held on the grass, so families come, and it is one of the easiest ways there is to spend an evening. I went most Thursdays: buy some fruit, sit on the grass for a while, then stop at Meadowlark Dairy on the way home.
Sunday's is the bigger one — more stalls, more people, considerably livelier. It closes by late afternoon, so it is a daytime thing: shopping, or lunch.
Parks and playgrounds
Like any American suburb, Livermore has neighborhood parks everywhere. The equipment is new, the grass is looked after, and they are genuinely good places for children. Several have pickleball courts, which we made use of more than once.
May Nissen Park is the biggest and the best equipped of them. There are enormous shade structures shaped like flowers, and the ground is painted in colors. The children never got bored of it.
There are indoor options as well. Peek-a-Boo Factory and Lost Worlds are both good for letting children run off energy.
We never made it to any of them, but there are several water parks nearby. Dublin Wave Waterpark, in Dublin, is supposed to be the big one, with a children's pool and slides — worth knowing about in the heat of the summer.
Yosemite
This is one of the best things we did while we were there.
Yosemite is consistently near the top of any list of American national parks, and it is a World Heritage Site. You can drive there from Livermore, and there are bus tours from nearby towns. If you are here, take the chance.
America is big. Getting to Yosemite from most cities easily takes ten hours, sometimes days. From Livermore it is three or four hours by car — still a drive, but nothing like the alternative.
The park is vast and there is a great deal to see. Go if you possibly can. It really is beautiful, and there is a sense of scale to it that I have not found anywhere else. Everyone should see it once.
Walking through the valley, rock faces like this one simply appear through the trees. Photographs do not get the size across.
Farther afield
Dublin and Pleasanton
The two towns next to Livermore, both about ten minutes away by car. Between them they have the shopping centers, restaurants and cafés, which makes them useful.
They are also where the BART stations are, so this is how you get to San Francisco or Oakland. The track runs down the middle of the freeway, so if you drive past you get a good look at the station with the wing-shaped roof.
San Francisco
An hour to an hour and a half by car. It needs no introduction — the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf — and it is famously hilly, so the cable cars and the streets themselves are part of the appeal. A few of the places we went:
Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf
Pier 39 is one of the landmarks: shops, restaurants, attractions. Wild sea lions haul out on the floating docks to sunbathe. There are a great many of them and they are loud — you know they are there long before you can see them.
Fisherman's Wharf is a short walk away, lined with seafood restaurants and souvenir shops.
Twin Peaks
A viewpoint up in the hills. You can see the whole city from it, along with the Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge.
Palace of Fine Arts
Built for the Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915. The architecture and the gardens are lovely, and it turns out to be a very good spot for a picnic.
We sat on the grass by the lagoon and ate what we had brought with us. Simple enough, but having that building in front of you while you do it is something else. It is strange to think it went up for a single exhibition and is still standing more than a century later.
Oakland and Berkeley
Half an hour by car. Both are substantial cities and there is a great deal you could do; here is what we did.
Oakland Zoo. Plenty of animals, and a gondola you can ride for the view. The site is not enormous, which is rather the point — you are not worn out by the walking and it does not swallow the whole day. Easy with children. It sits up on a hill, so you get the city behind the animals, which I liked.
UC Berkeley. A beautiful campus. We walked around the older buildings and the gardens, and there is a shop.
A few more places
Cattlemens, a steakhouse in Livermore, was another favorite of ours.
Livermore is in the Bay Area, so the list of possible destinations is effectively endless. Silicon Valley has Stanford and most of the technology industry, along with some good museums — worth a weekend if you are curious.
And if you have the time, Los Angeles is south of here. Disneyland on a day off is not out of the question.
Before I go
Livermore gave us a great many good memories. Thank you to everyone who looked after us there.
I would like to come back as soon as I can.