More of San Francisco

Today has been the warmest day we have had consistently all day here in San Francisco - the sun shone, the wind stayed fairly low-key - it was very pleasant.  And, we spent a lot of the day indoors!

We walked past the City Hall and surrounding buildings (very ornate, renaissance-style) and hopped on a trolley bus up to Alamo Square, to see the famed Painted Ladies.  One of them was under cover, getting a new paint job perhaps.

There are so many ornate houses / apartments here in San Francisco, not just the Painted Ladies.  The fretwork is so detailed on some of them, and nicely painted in contrasting colours.  Painted Ladies is actually an American architectural term referring to Victorian and Edwardian houses and buildings painted in 3 or more colours that embellish or enhance the architectural details.

 

 We then hopped on another bus and made our way to the Pacific Ocean, alongside Golden Gate Park, over 1,000 acres of public land, with lakes (we passed one used for model yachts which had turtles in it!), polo fields, the National AIDS Memorial Grove, a number of art galleries and museums, a Dutch Windmill, a Japanese Tea Garden, and bison fields.  A lot of the grass is covered with small mounds of dirt - if you are lucky, you can see them moving and growing larger, as a gopher pushes more dirt out of his hole!

We then spent a good part of the afternoon at the California Academy of Sciences, one of the largest museums of natural history in the world.   We saw a rainforest in a 27m glass dome (with butterflies, macaws, frogs, snakes, lizards); aquariums (with coral reef, tidepool, and swamp habitats, as well as a colony of African penguins); the largest completely digital planetarium dome in the world (we saw a movie about dark matter and dark energy); and the green roof (over 1 acre of grass and flowers, and associated insects and birds).  The building is very environmentally friendly, with photovoltaic cells, rainwater collection, natural lighting, etc.  There were a lot of interactive activities, and lots of opportunities to look for insects, fish and reptiles.  Robin found it difficult to leave an exhibit if he had not personally seen all the animals that were supposed to be in it!

Our next stop of the day, for only a short time (as we'd already seen aquariums, and were getting tired / hungry) was the Aquarium on the Bay.  They had 2 touch pools - Robin took delight in touching the stingrays and the sharks.

I personally liked seeing the jellyfish and other floating marine life (see below).

We finished off back in Chinatown for dinner - $5.99 for all we could eat Dim Sum - a new experience for the boys, who gallantly tried quite a few items.  Their favourite - the fortune cookies!!