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Bay Area Trip – Day 2 – Friday, February 11th

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Jennifer

Warning: I’m sharing 49 of the 309 photos I snapped for the day. Make sure you click on a picture if you want to view it bigger.

California Academy of Sciences

We took the bus from our hotel to Golden Gate Park, home to among other things the California Academy of Sciences. As a large urban park, it is similar to NYC’s Central Park  although at 1,017 acres, it is 20% larger than Central Park. The area between the California Academy of Sciences and the de Young Musuem is called the Music Concourse. One of the first things that caught our eyes were these weird looking trees. I’ve since found out these are normal trees pruned in a method called pollarding, which promotes a dense head of foliage and branches. This practice is performed to maintain trees at a predetermined height. It would be interesting to see the trees in the summer with foliage. They probably don’t look so alien then.

James and Pollarded Tree

California Academy of Sciences

Spreckels Temple of Music, aka the Bandshell

de Young

The first exhibit we experienced was “Rainforests of the World.” This is the exhibit we probably spent the most time perusing. It was really neat.

Strawberry Poison Dart Frogs

The base of the rain forest dome was “flooded.” Some of the fish were quite large, perhaps as big as a human adult. After ascending the walkway that circled the dome, you took the elevator to the lower level of the museum. After exiting the elevator,  you could watch the fish swim over your head. Note the people seen in the left of the next photo. They weren’t swimming with the fish.

Rain Forest Floor Fish Tank

Parrot

I really enjoyed taking photos of the butterflies, so you will see a number of the different types found in the dome. I’m not sure if there were more Isabella Longwings or if they were just camera hogs, but they were the subjects of probably half of my butterfly photos.

Isabella Longwing

Isabella Longwing

Golden Mantella

Giant Owl

Sapho Longwing

Isabella Longwing

Female Purple Honeycreeper and Paradise Tanager

The aquarium filled the entire lower level of the museum.

Upside-down Jellyfish

Philippine Coral Reef

James and I remember frequently seeing relatives of this little guy on our trip to Tahiti. Although our favorite on that trip was the Picasso Triggerfish.

Palette Surgeonfish, aka Dory fish

We ate lunch in the museum cafeteria. The selection and quality was very good. Afterward, we went to the “Islands of Evolution” exhibit.

Madagascar Plated Lizard

Then we wandered up to the observation deck of the living roof. They shaped the roof like San Francisco, with seven hills. I think a living roof is such a fabulous concept. Just think, if you have ancestors who lived in dugouts, they were early pioneers of living roofs.

Living Roof

Powdery Dudleya

Living Roof

Back inside, you can look up through the glass ceiling of the Piazza to see the living roof.

Piazza Ceiling

The museum also has a planetarium (passes are distributed on a first come first served basis), but we picked the one day it happened to be closed for maintenance. So we headed back downstairs to the aquarium for a chat with a diver in the Philippine Coral Reef.

Diver Show

After leaving the California Academy of Sciences, we strolled through a small portion of Golden Gate Park enjoying the scenery.

Roses

Cherry Blossoms

Can you tell you're in the most densely populated city in California?

Golden Gate Bridge

From Fulton St., we hopped on a bus to drive up Park Presidio Blvd. to the Golden Gate Bridge.

James with Cable Section

Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge

James and Jennifer

Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco Skyline

On Bridge Deck

James and the Golden Gate Bridge

Jennifer and the Golden Gate Bridge

Poppies

Flower with Bridge in Background

Palace of Fine Arts

From the bridge, we took a short bus ride to the Palace of Fine Arts. This was even more amazing during the daytime.

Dome of Palace of Fine Arts

Arches

Decorative Detail

Palace Lagoon

You can really see how massive a structure it is, by this next picture of James relaxing on a bench in front of the domed part of the structure.

James

Gallivanting Goose

James and the Palace of Fine Arts

Jennifer and the Palace of Fine Arts

Houses as Far as the Eye Can See

Evening

From the Palace of Fine Arts, we took another bus to Ghirardelli Square. We checked out the beach of Aquatic Park, a small lagoon located just north of Ghirardelli Square nearly encircled by two piers with a small opening out to the bay. Apparently, people swim here year-round since it is free from sea craft, but we didn’t see any swimmers while we were there and I don’t think I would want to swim there in February.

Aquatic Park

Sunset Over the Bay

We then walked over to Scoma’s on Pier 47 for a delectable dinner. We didn’t order an appetizer, but the sourdough bread served prior to receiving our entrees was extremely tasty. James ate Seafood Canneloni and thought of it like Italian enchiladas. I ate Grilled Pacific Red Snapper with garlic lemon butter that James even said was good (and he’s not the biggest fish person). Afterward, we wandered the shops for a bit to work up an appetite for dessert. We headed back to Ghirardelli Square to share an ice cream sundae at the lower of the two Ghirardelli shops in the square. Did you know that Ghirardelli first opened shop in 1852?

Ghirardelli Square

If you missed Day 1 of our trip, go here and here for an Alcatraz cell door video. Stay tuned for days 3 and 4.

Posted in Travel | Tags: San Francisco | 1 Comment
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One thought on “Bay Area Trip – Day 2 – Friday, February 11th”

  1. Olivia Moore says:
    March 2, 2011 at 11:59 AM

    We are enjoying all of your pictures. Can’t wait to see more. Have also enjoyed the captions under the pictures. When we were there, we didn’t have time to do very much sightseeing. Joe was there for business and I was along for a spouses tour.

    Mom

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