Blast from the Past: San Francisco

Recently I have been trying to organize my digital life in addition to all of the moving in/baby preparations.  As I was going through pictures from our San Francisco trip last year, I realized that I never finished documenting our adventures.  The following is for history’s sake; feel free to reminisce with me, or just skip the really old news. From where I left off:

We began the next day going to the California Academy of Sciences. It included an impressive conglomeration of exhibits: a rain forest, earthquake simulator, feeding the penguins show, and water-creature petting zoo.  It was super interesting!

We enjoyed our packed lunch on a bench outside and then headed over to a huge highlight – the Exploratorium. This would be a place I would highly recommend to anyone heading out that way and that we would probably go back to if we ever found ourselves back in California.  We enjoyed exhibits covering all sorts of scientific topics in a hands on manner.  I even got to fulfill a lifelong dream of dissecting a cows eyeball!

This contraption switched the direction you hear sound from.

I LOVE theremins and had wanted to “play” one for awhile.  If you’ve never seen one played, check out this video.

Lovely cow eyeball!

A cool string contraption that spun the string really fast so that it would stand straight up in the air or you could get it to bend around in weird ways.

The tube had air blowing and the goal was to drop a water droplet gently and then it would go up and down in the stream of air.

A marbleworks track of sorts; Andrew and the little boy got really into it!

On our last day in the city, we spent it with some of our friends from BYU who were originally from the area and moved back.  We got an early start exploring some less-wandered areas.  Of course we had to buy some cherries from a man on the side of the road. They were delicious and we enjoyed them throughout the day.

We explored some bunkers on the hillside and took advantage of the lookout points.

We enjoyed lunch on a beach.

Then headed back out to our explorations.  We had hoped to see a lighthouse, but it had closed for the day.  This was as close as we got.

We did see a pretty awesome military fortress of sorts that held cannons.

All good explorers need to eat, so we crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge and headed to Pier 39 for some food.  Of course we needed to try clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl.

 

We strolled up and down the pier before ending our adventures in the heart of San Francisco.  There were two brothers that were very impressive circus performers.  We caught the end of their act.

We then headed towards Oakland to go to Fentons  Creamery, made famous by the movie UP.  We met up with yet another BYU couple that also happened to be spending the same week in San Francisco.  It was crazy to all be hanging out in California together!  For the record, the ice cream was delicious.

And that was our trip to San Francisco.