Golden Gate Park

Well we had another super busy Saturday. We left our apartment around 9:00 in the morning and got back just before 5:00. Once we got home we pretty much sat on the couch the rest of the night. Don't judge, we had to rest our legs! We did actually take the bus this trip which was a huge help, but of course we walked a long ways. Luckily the weather here is really nice. I keep hearing people talk about how incredibly hot it's been back home. I'm so glad it's not humid here!

Our whole plan for the day was to check out the Golden Gate Park. We ended up doing so much more. I didn't know much about the park so I read a little bit in one of our tour books. Despite the name, the park is not near the Golden Gate Bridge. It's larger than Central Park in New York City at 1,000 acres and stretches from the Haight District to the Pacific Ocean. We entered the park walking through some awesome groves on the eastern side.

Then we came across the California Academy of Sciences building. It had some great exhibits, a planetarium where we explored the universe, a rainforest with birds and butterflies flying around, an energy efficient living roof, an aquarium with an albino alligator and more. We spent a good 3 hours here and enjoyed as much as we could.

We packed a lunch thinking we'd eat it in the park. Good thing we did, the cafe was packed plus it let us escape from all of the people... namely children.

Across the street was the de Young Museum.

We went up in the tower you can see on the right and got a great view of the city. Unfortunately it was foggy so we couldn't see very far, but what's new? Here is the California Academy of Sciences just across the street. Can you see the living roof?

Next we walked further into the park and stopped at Stow Lake. It is a manmade lake you can hike around on the trails (or on the island in the middle of the lake where the waterfall is), sit and feed the ducks on a bench or ride paddle boats.

This has turned into a really long post and as you can see, there's lots to do at the Golden Gate Park After we left the park we found out we had only covered about 1/3 of the whole thing. I guess we just need to return some other weekend.