Tuesday morning, Robbie had to be at his conference really early in the morning. So although Meo got to see him a little bit before he left the hotel, Robbie was unable to have breakfast with us. Since it cost $18 each to eat breakfast in the hotel (how ridiculous is that??), I decided to take Meo back to Pat's Cafe where we could enjoy much better food for half the price. This time I ordered their fruit crepe and a cup of fruit with yogurt for Meo. Oh man, breakfast was delicious! Just thinking about it makes me want to go upstairs and cook crepes. Hmmm. No, I'll finish writing this post as it is taking me far too long to write about our San Francisco trip.
My big plan for the day was to head into Golden Gate park, on the other side of the city. Surprisingly, Golden Gate park is not next to the Golden Gate bridge. But it does have lots of cool museums, ponds, gardens, beaches, trails, and wildlife including buffalo (supposedly; I didn't get to see them though which I was bummed about). The park itself is 4.5 miles long! To get there, Meo and I hopped onto a cable car, which is a type of transportation unique to San Francisco. These cars (more like a bus or small train) move by gripping onto continuously running cables on the ground, and stop by releasing the cable. The guys who ran the cable cars were such characters. When I asked them who I give my money to, one of them responded, "you can give your money to anyone. Anyone will take your money". They made sarcastic, good-natured comments like this all through town. It was a fun ride, though I admit since I was new to San Francisco, sometimes I couldn't tell if they were being serious or not. For example, I paid for my ride using a clipper card (a card you put money on beforehand and use to get onto most transportation in San Francisco, sometimes at a discounted rate, without having to have exact change on you). When I asked if I could have a physical ticket as a souvenir for Meo, he told me $6 please. I thought he was joking, since obviously I already paid $6 to get on, why would I pay another $6. But apparently you can only get a physical ticket by paying with cash, because I never got one.
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| First Cable Car Ride |
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| downtown |
Once we got to the park, we walked to the California Academy of Sciences. Along the way we saw this guy doing some crazy tricks with a huge hoop. He would actually stand inside of it and roll upside down; it was pretty cool.
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| California Academy of Sciences |
The California Academy of Sciences was surprisingly expensive, but pretty awesome! I had only planned to spend a couple hours there but ended up spending most of our day there! There was a lot to see, and Meo had a lot of fun. We began by looking at their big stuffed African animals. I let Meo out of the Ergo Baby so he could explore and he kept walking up to the displays and giggling or staring intently.
There really was a lot of cool exhibits to check out in the museum, but some of them were too old for Mattimeo to appreciate so we just skipped over them. One thing I was bummed about missing was the planetarium! They don't allow children under 4 to go in, and that made me sad because I love star gazing.
One area that Meo especially enjoyed was the toddler room. This room was awesome! There were puzzles and books, a pretend farmers market, a tree house to climb, a scientific ship to explore, and pretend squishy mats to tumble on. This was a place where I could just set him free and watch him explore. He had so much fun! My favorite things to see him do was run around gleefully while looking through a magnifying glass, snuggling with a toy chicken sitting in the farmer's market display, and carrying around a cute little watering can all over the place.
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| Such a cute tree house |
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| Heading into the scientific exploration ship |
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| Running around looking through a magnifying glass |
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| Test tubes |
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| My little scientist |
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| Walking around with his watering can |
After playing in the toddler room for quite some time, we got hungry and enjoyed some lunch in the museum cafe. One of the museum staff was really helpful and carried all of our food to the register and to our table for me. We had some yummy macaroni and cheese and cauliflower next to a pretty aquarium for lunch.
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| Lunch! |
After lunch, we headed into the rainforest! They had a glass, climate controlled sphere full of tropical plants and free flying butterflies. The sphere was made of several levels, so you spiraled through the inner edge of it, going through different tropical ecosystems as you climbed. Mattimeo really enjoyed seeing all the butterflies and birds flying around!
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| Frogs |
Next, there was a small aquarium inside the museum. They had a touch tank, but it was too high up for Meo to reach into on his own so we skipped it. But they did have really huge, floor to ceiling aquariums that Meo could stand in front of and watch all the beautiful tropical fish swim by. That was pretty awesome!
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| Shrimp cleaning the eels' mouths |
They had a room with some native Californian art that was pretty cool. I especially liked this sculpture.
Finally, we headed up to the roof which was definitely the coolest roof I have ever been on! The museum has a living roof! Here is a bit about the roof I took from their
website:
The more typical black tar-and-asphalt building rooftop leads to a phenomenon called the “Urban Heat Island” effect. The endless swath of black rooftops and pavement trap heat, causing cities to be 6 to 10 degrees warmer than outlying greenbelt areas. One-sixth of all electricity consumed in the U.S. goes to cool buildings. The Academy's green rooftop keeps the building's interior an average of 10 degrees cooler than a standard roof would. The plants also transform carbon dioxide into oxygen, capture rainwater, and reduce energy needs for heating and cooling.
The Living Roof´s 1.7 million native plants were specially chosen to flourish in Golden Gate Park´s climate.
After experimenting with thirty native species, the finalists were all able to self-propagate. These nine species, located inside and outside of the special exhibit, will thrive with little water, resist the salt spray from ocean air, and tolerate wind.
Four Perennial Plants
Strawberry — Fragaria chiloensis
Self Heal — Prunella vulgaris
Sea Pink — Armeria maritima ssp. californica
Stonecrop — Sedum spathulifolium
Five Annual Wildflowers
Tidy Tips — Layia platyglossa
Goldfield — Lasthenia californica
Miniature Lupine — Lupinus nanus
California Poppy — Eschscholzia californica
California Plantain — Plantago erecta
After finishing up at the Science Academy, Meo and I were both really tired. I had been hoping to go to both the Botanical Garden and Japanese Tea Garden before heading back to the hotel, but decided just to check out the tea garden as we were short on time. The Japanese Tea garden was very pretty and full of lovely Japanese sculptures and bonsai plants. There was even a nice little zen garden. Nothing can compare to the real Japanese gardens I saw in Japan, but this was still very pleasant to walk around. Meo was getting tired and hungry and sick of being on my back, so I ended up taking him out of the carrier to nurse him and let him stretch his legs a bit before we took the long bus rides back to the hotel. There was a cute little outdoor cafe to have tea and biscuits in, which I really would have enjoyed, but there wasn't really any good seating for Meo and he was not in the right mood to sit calmly in my lap so I could enjoy a calm, peaceful moment sipping tea.
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| Entrance to the Japanese Tea Garden |
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| Zen Garden |
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| Be free, and please be peaceful Meo |
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| Crazy baby |
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| Yay! Snuggles! |
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| Almost falling over |
It was very hot that day, and the buses were overfull for most of our ride, to the extent that Meo and I were practically standing on the front steps hanging on to a pole (yes, Meo held onto the pole too hehe). We were both very tired, hot, and irritable.
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| Sleepy on the bus |
Meo had fallen asleep by the time I walked us back home from the last bus stop. When we got to the hotel, I was so exhausted, I did not want to go anywhere. I just plopped down in a chair and tried to take a nap with Meo snoozing on top of me.
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| How Robbie found us when he got back to the hotel |
But to my dismay, our time of rest quickly needed to come to an end because we needed to fill our empty bellies. Robbie had made plans with our friend Paul and his new girlfriend, Becka, to go out to eat. Becka has a car, so we got Meo into his carseat and strapped him into the car, hoping that eating at 7 pm was not going to tip Meo over the edge. We drove a fair distance across the city to go to a fantastic green restaurant called Source. Robbie, Meo and I enjoyed some delicious rosemary fries and some very healthy, yummy pizza. For a drink I tried one of their smoothies made out of almond milk, bananas, and cacao chocolate which they called a chocolate monkey. I let Meo have some too since it was both delicious and healthy, and he couldn't get enough. He kept signing more after each spoonful I fed him!
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| "More chocolate monkey milkshake please!!" |
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| Eating at source with Becka and Paul |
Seeing Paul and meeting Becka was really nice. I'm glad we had people we knew to visit in the city, they made us feel welcome and we had fun. Becka was really sweet and drove us to whole foods so I could pick up some more diapers for Meo (we used disposable/biodegradable ones on our trip instead of cloth) and some grapes and xylitol gum (our dentist recommends chewing it after each meal). By the time we got home, it was really late, and I am both amazed and thankful that Meo was able to stay content and not break down crying in the car. We did have to listen to Disney music in the car, but luckily Becka enjoyed that too. Thanks for a great night you too.
Did I mention that I was convinced I had lost at least five pounds already from non stop walking and carrying Meo and a diaper everywhere all day long?
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| Feeling smaller. |
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