Location is everything. Certainly that's true for Sacramento – close to the mountains, the sea, the redwood forests. Day trips and weekends away are integral to our lives.

In that spirit, we cruised to Sausalito, a destination famed for sightseeing, dining, shopping, bicycling, hiking, kayaking and just strolling the waterfront near the yacht harbor. Our aim: Find the Sausalito the casual visitor can miss.

We knew in starting out that Sausalito is a bustling coastal village that boasts a Mediterranean feel – sparkling houses nestled on dark hillsides sloping down to Richardson's Bay, along with world-class views of the San Francisco skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge and Mount Tamalpais. Also, depending on where you are in town, you can look out over the water to Belvedere, Angel Island and Alcatraz.

It's a unique spot where the locals mingle with foreign visitors who take ferries over from San Francisco.

"Like everyone I know who lives here, I feel very grateful," says Babs Malone, a paleontologist who has occupied a century-old house in the Sausalito hills for 25 years. "We have tourists from around the world year-round, and we're happy to have them. Sometimes the numbers of cars, bikes and people do get a little distressing, but you just chill out."

From Sacramento, we were only a two-hour drive away. But before setting out, we prepped with two detail-filled guides: www.sausalito.org, the Web site of the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce; and www.ci.sausalito.ca.us, the city-sponsored site.

Life on the water

From the Sausalito exit off southbound Highway 101 just before the Golden Gate Bridge, we took on the town from north to south along the main drag, Bridgeway Avenue.

Our first stop: Waldo Point Harbor Houseboat Marina, where more than 400 floating homes form a unique community. (Turn at the light at Gate 6 Road.) Many of the homes are exquisite, though a few are tubs with rotting siding. Some are artistically embellished with stained- and etched-glass windows and doors, and accented with whimsical sculptures and murals of mermaids and dragons, fish and whales.

Our favorite stroll was on Issaquah Dock, where three floating homes were for sale. The one for $769,000 featured handmade bannisters, bamboo floors, Venetian glass light fixtures and bathrooms of marble and onyx.

Information: The Floating Homes Association, (415) 332-1916 and www.floatinghomes.org.

Nearby, Heath Ceramics, a retail-wholesale showroom and factory, specializes in hand-crafted ceramics and tiles. The company was founded in 1948 in San Francisco by Edith Heath, a potter- designer who was "discovered" by Gump's department store. Her legacy lives on in her Coup, Rim and Plaza lines, nicely displayed and aglow in quiet colors and pleasing shapes.

"Everything is handmade from unprocessed materials, from the clay to the glaze," said retail manager Justyn Lefebre. "We don't know what an item will look like until it's taken out of the kiln."

For sale are first- and second-quality ceramics – seconds are about 30 percent less – and custom-made tiles. One "second" serving bowl that looked perfect to us was marked down from $105 to $78.

Free factory tours are offered on a drop-in basis at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. weekends, and by appointment at 12:30 p.m. Fridays. Turn off Bridgeway onto Gate 5 Road. Information: (415) 332-3732 and www.heathceramics.com.

Two casual restaurants favored by the locals are on this side of town.

Kitti's Place serves "Thai- influenced California cuisine" (seafood stir-fry with hot-chili garlic sauce), while Dario's specializes in loaded pizzas (the Italiano and the Greek are favorites). Kitti's: 3001 Bridgeway, (415) 331-0390 and www.kittsplace.com; Dario's: 2829 Bridgeway, (415) 332-6636 and www.dariospizza.net.

Dine where the locals do

Driving south, we turned right onto Johnson Street, then left on Caledonia Street, which parallels Bridgeway as far as Napa Street. Here is the day-to-day shopping area for the neighborhood. Of particular note are the classic Waterstreet Hardware and Flying Oliver Books.

Dining-wise, the star is Sushi Ran, a local favorite and a destination for sushi lovers from around Marin County and San Francisco. The high-energy Japanese restaurant has an enormous, ever-changing menu of sushi, sashimi and maki, and dishes such as delicate scallop-chive dumplings and grilled Wagyu tri-tip. You won't find better (107 Caledonia St.; 415-332-3620 and www.sushiran.com).

The menu at the nearby local favorite Caffe DiVino is heavy with Italian specialties. The wine bar and sidewalk cafe are very laid-back; the scene gets jammed nightly for the live music, from jazz to tango (37 Caledonia St.; 415-331-9355 and http://caffedivinosausalito. com).

Back on Bridgeway and heading south toward downtown, we stopped for a bite at the Lighthouse Café, another locals hangout, where, said one customer, "They really understand bacon." There we found owner Gerner Andresen, who came from Denmark and opened the Lighthouse in 1992. "My wife and I settled in Sausalito and took a chance with this restaurant."

Go for the incredible blueberry pancakes and come back to sample the Danish lunch specials such as meatballs with marinated- cucumber salad, and smoked salmon with creamed spinach (1311 Bridgeway; 415-331-3034 and www.lighthouse-restaurants.com/sausalito).

Farther along, on the left, is the Sausalito Yacht Harbor, well worth a stroll-by. You can't miss it – look for the masts.

Where worlds mingle

Now in the downtown "tourist zone," we parked and swam in a melting pot of visitors. We heard Italian, Spanish, French and languages we didn't recognize.

Downtown is where seemingly every other storefront is an art gallery or a women's fashion boutique. In between are restaurants, sidewalk cafes and delis, and stores selling everything from wine, jewelry and board games to T-shirts, sundries and ice cream. Pods of bicyclists are legion, making downtown look like the start of the Tour de France. We found several places that stood apart:

• Attached to historic Casa Madrona is the four-star Poggio Trattoria, where crowds gather at the sidewalk cafe for Sunday breakfast. A good dinner choice is the grilled pork chop and spit-roasted pork belly with braised greens and apricots (777 Bridgeway; 415-332-7771 and www.poggiotrattoria. com).

• Known as the No Name Bar, the sign outside reads, "The Bar With No Name." Either way, this mellow 50-year-old local hangout gets energized after dark, when the live music begins (757 Bridgeway; 415-332-1392).

• Gene Hiller Fine Menswear, which opened in 1953, is a showcase of clothing from the likes of designers Brioni and Zanella. We spotted Alberto jeans and a pair of St. Croix corduroy slacks, each $225 (729 Bridgeway; 415-332-3636 and www.genehiller.com).

• Two doors down is Piccolo Teatro, specializing in the cuisine of Venice. Inside are a comfortable bar, a wood-burning fireplace and a menu of intriguing dishes, including house-made pastas and rib eye steak with mascarpone cheese-accented polenta (739 Bridgeway; 415-332-0739 and www. piccoloteatrodisausalito. com).

• Flanked by those two upscale places is tiny Bridgeway Hamburgers, where people line up for truly great burgers (takeout only). The burgers are displayed in a window on a rotating grill as they cook, and the aroma is irresistible (737 Bridgeway, 415-332-9471).

• We took our sack of burgers and crinkle-cut fries across the street to the small, exquisitely landscaped Plaza Vina del Mar. We admired the multitiered fountain and the stone elephant sculptures, created in 1915 for the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco and donated to Sausalito in 1916.

• We turned on to quiet Princess Street, past a sign advertising palm readings, and found the 20-year-old Mark Reuben's Sports and History Gallery, filled with "over 5,000 unique and historical photographs." One display in a glass box holds a photo of Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams, posing together; included in the package are three baseballs autographed by the trio ($5,500).

The best-selling photo? That would be from 1930, said Reuben, taken during Prohibition. It shows a picket line of men with signs saying, "We want beer" (12 Princess St.; 415-332-8815 and www. markreubengallery.com).

• On El Portal, another street off Bridgeway, is Paul & Shark, where men's and women's clothing move to another dimension. The Italian company, founded in 1921, focused on fashions for yachting. Now it maintains 250 stores worldwide, with five in the United States.

"We sell clothing that will last a lifetime," said sales associate Joshua Dodge. We spotted a jacket made from water-resistant cashmere and wool ($2,900), a sweater with a 24-karat gold-plated zipper ($689) and a beautiful long-sleeved cotton shirt ($250). The stuff of dreams. (22 El Portal; 415-331-0588. www.paulshark.com).

• Sausalito is all about great vistas, and we combined one of them with excellent Ramos fizzes at the bar at the bayside Spinnaker restaurant, a short walk off Bridgeway. One wall of the room is floor-to-ceiling glass and overlooks glorious sights (100 Spinnaker Drive; 415-332-1500 and www.thespinnaker.com).

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Next week in Travel: We head out from central Sausalito to the Marin headlands – and find three special spots. Call The Bee's Allen Pierleoni, (916) 321-1128.

• Read more articles by Allen Pierleoni