San Francisco: Fun Filled Day

I wanted to bring Adam to Golden Gate Park, because he had never had the pleasure of visiting any of the last trips that we took to San Fran. I feel like visiting the Golden Gate Park is a must do when you're in the city.

We started our day at the California Academy of Sciences. A nerd's paradise.

We headed straight for the Earthquake exhibit. They built a model home to replicate what it felt like to be in both the 1906 and the 1989 earthquakes. I've always been terrified of the thought of earthquakes. I remember when I was little and we had an earthquake at our house in New Jersey and it freaked me out. Then last year we had our fair share of natural disasters in the Northeast, including the Virginia earthquake, which somehow made it's way up here. Now granted, neither of those earthquakes were all that strong, so I was curious to know what a strong earthquake would feel like especially since at the time we were considering a move to Northern California. Yup, definitely how I expected. I'll take a nor'easter over an earthquake any day, thankyouverymuch.

After the earthquake, we headed over to check out the baby ostrich exhibit. According to the Academy, ostriches are connected to earthquakes. From what I understand it has to do with the movement of the plates, since their closest ancestors are located in South America. Anyway, the ostriches were wicked adorable.

We took the elevator upstairs to the living roof, which is beyond amazing. They have this super complicated system of drainage to keep plants native to the area growing on the roof. It's so gorgeous and so is the view. The building across from the Cal Academy of Sciences is the de Young Museum, which has a great view of the city from it's tower room.

We headed back downstairs to visit the rainforest. This was the only exhibit that was closed for refurbishment the last time I visited and it was probably the one thing I wanted to see the most. As you walk up the spiral path, you head into different parts of the canopy, which have different animals and plants. Once you reach the top, it's just amazing. There are birds and butterflies flying everywhere.

After we finished up at the Academy of Sciences, we walked over to the de Young museum, which was also included on our City Pass. Adam's not really an art museum kind of guy, but he let me walk around in a few exhibits. We mainly wanted to see the view from the top of the tower. You can really see a lot of San Francisco from up there.

The last place we visited before leaving Golden Gate Park was the Conservatory of Flowers. I really enjoyed my visit last year when they had a "Wicked Plants" exhibit that featured poisonous plants from all over the world. This year was a prehistoric plant exhibit complete with dinosaurs.

I love Golden Gate Park and wish we could have spent more time there visiting the waterfalls and the bison, but it was getting hot out and we were getting tired from all the walking. It's definitely a lot of walking. :)