Day two in the city

Okay, sorry for the delay, I just had to take a break from pictures! I had three shoots and this, I was fed up with the computer (and I think visa versa).

The second day we went to San Fran we decided we needed to see some things on our city pass. So, first we went to the aquarium at Pier 39. It was nice, don't get to see a lot of aquariums in the mid-west (not that I've lived in the mid-west recently).

Here are some jelly fish.

These were HUGE jelly fish!!! I don't think I've seen bigger!

They had two walk-through tunnels. One was supposed to be like it was right under the pier and the other was to resemble more out in the bay. This one was right under the pier.

This octopus was huge! I wasn't supposed to use my flash and that's how I had my camera set, but then I turned it off and then back on and it reset its self, grrrr. So I might as well use the picture! Come to find out my point and shoot has an "aquarium" setting that uses no flash automatically. Who knew?!

A shark, duh...

This diver was vacuuming the second aquarium. Thought it was funny...

They had an area where you could pet the stingrays. I didn't get pictures there but I got some of these baby skates. So basically they lay these pods made of protein and to help you see the inside the scientists cut away the side and glued a clear piece of plastic. They are in there for about two months and then they chew their way out. They've had so many that they are starting to put them back in the bay instead of keeping them in captivity. There was a lot more to the conversation but I can't remember it all. It was really interesting.


Aaron touching the starfish. A nice lady we didn't know took this picture because she saw me trying to take one of us myself. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen...

Then we went to pier 39 where all the sea lions hang out. They said that in the winter there can be as many as 1000 at a time here. This picture only captures about a third of the ones we saw here. Chuck says he hopes people reading this care about San Fran as much as I do because they'll hear a lot. Blah!

This place was beautiful. These pictures aren't half as majestic as being there was. This is the Palace of Fine Arts and it was built in 1915 as part of the Panama-Pacific Exposition. They had a habit of tearing down wonderful buildings after they were done using them (1904 worlds fair in STL) but this and the exposition hall (which is where the next museum is housed) were left standing. How funny, I was going to comment that this would be a great place to get married if you lived in San Fran but then my resource says that many couples do get married here. I'm not very original...



This was inside the Exploratorium. For you St. Louisans, it's a HUGE, GIGANTIC, MASSIVE Science Center. It was about the same size but it had twice or thrice the amount of things to do and see. Here's V doing some of the exhibits...

They could actually watch the people putting exhibits together






This was from about the beginning and you can't even see the back. AND there's a second level that's about a quarter of the size of the main floor. We didn't even go up there. The place looked like a big hangar. You could have spent all day there and then some if you wanted to do everything but we had to limit ourselves to 1 hour!

More of the Palace




The next thing on our list was to walk across the street to the beach. There were more kite surfers and this particular beach was having a kite surfing competition so there were tons of them in the water and on the beach.

They are much bigger than I thought they'd be, not as big as a parachute but much bigger than a kite!

Aaron's first time on a beach...


I'm not sure he liked how it felt on his feet. It wasn't hot, just weird.

Here you can see people trying to get out of the water with their kites, it was interesting. They were attached to a surf board and their kite.

I'm sure Christie will appreciate this, this is her multitasking. She is the queen of multitasking. Walking V, feeding Alexander, carrying things, and usually holding something else. It was amazing...

These were some houses (I'm not sure what to call them, most "houses" in San Fran are attached to other houses) on the way to our bus stop. I just thought they were amazing...


Okay, more tomorrow (hopefully)...