Your introduction to the Bay Area

First, some simple geography! This is an article on the entire Bay Area: Wikipedia article on the Bay Area

As noted in the geology section of the article, you'll actually be visiting when the terrain is at its greenest, due to the preceding wet season.

Here is your hotel in relation to my house:


View Larger Map

Then, the BART website:
bart.gov

Macarthur Station is two blocks away from my house and also the closest BART station to drive to from the hotel. You can either park at my place or pay $1.00 to park in the BART parking lot for the day. Embarcadero is the first of the four main stops in downtown San Francisco, and is about 15 minutes away from Macarthur. Embarcadero is right near the waterfront, Montgomery Street has the financial district to its north and many of the city's best museums to its south, Powell Street is the major shopping and theatre district and also home to the terminus of the cable car, and Civic Center is home to City Hall, the courts, and lots of bus and trolley lines that go out into the further reaches of the city. All of these stops run along Market Street, which is the spine of downtown San Francisco. They are all relatively close to one another.
I'm also only two stops away from the downtown Berkeley station, as well as two stops from downtown Oakland.

Next, the official website of Emeryville, the city in which you are staying:
Emeryville

This website describes a bunch of the local neighborhoods in Oakland and Berkeley. I live just south of Temescal, and work in the Fourth Street district: SF Gate Neighborhoods of the East Bay