Having woken at 3am, I had exhausted all of the Facebook, motorcycle websites, & Breaking Bad episodes I could manage sitting in bed without breaking my back when I urged my traveling companions to extricate themselves from their cocoons at about 9:30.
We finally headed for the California Academy of Sciences at the Golden Gate Park. This facility houses an aquarium, planetarium, natural history museum, and four-story rainforest—all under one “living roof”.
The acquarium was quite impressive, but possibly at the expense of the other sciences covered.
The planetarium ran a mix of videos (Life on Earth, Mars Curiosity, & Dark Matter). The natural history exhibits included earthquakes, natural selection (Gallapagos & Madagascar), & plate tectonics.
The rainforest was also quite interesting… and popular – the queue was miles long!
I did enjoy it, but I did get the feeling it tried to cover too much breath for the size of the facility which resulted in a lack of detail in quite a few areas. A fun day though.
Ellie, Grace, & I planned to split at the Academy so they could head to the shopping (!) while I read every little placard and saw every exhibit. They were well-n-truly hitting the specials when I’d finished. Rather than take public transport I figured I’d leg it back to the hotel. 1 hour 45 mins and 5 km later I arrived – knackered, but having seen the non-touristy back-streets of San Francisco.
I then headed off to the shopping myself…. I needed a battery/charge pack for my phone – it just wouldn’t last very long with all of the photos I was taking.
Then we caught up for dinner. Afterwards we enjoyed a “Sea Salt Caramel Sundae” from Ghiradelli Chocolate (famous local chocolatier) – something recommended to Ellie by one of her work-mates.
Absolutely scrumptious, absolutely rich, absolutely sickening. I’ll definitely need to re-acquaint myself with the treadmill when I get home!
We finished the evening with the most touristy of tourist attractions by grabbing a cable-car back to the hotel.
