Day 5 in San Francisco

Today, Monday 20th Sept, was a busy day. We caught a bus out to Haight-Ashbury to spend some time in hippy-ville but none of the shops were open yet (it was 10:20am). We didn't want to waste time hanging around until they opened so we went on to our next stop of the day with the idea to come back at the end of our days adventures.

From Haight St. we walked down to Golden Gate Park which was 4 blocks away. We spent a little while getting lost (it's not very well sign-posted) before we found the California Academy of Sciences. It is a museum that I would describe as a cross between Scitech and AQUA. They had a planetarium where we saw 'Journey to the Stars' (I happened to fall asleep during this, it was interesting, I just didn't get any sleep the night before due to the noisy street below us and it was dark and comfy and calming!). We also got to see live turtles, penguins, sea life, bugs, a macaw, frogs, a rainforest eco-dome, their 'living' roof and their most famous 'exhibit', Claude, the albino alligator.

Em these are just for you :)

Just when I thought cockroaches couldn't get any worse - Hissing Cockroaches!

So mesmerising!

The rainforest eco-dome

The living roof

Claude

Our next stop was the Japanese Tea Gardens (also inside Golden Gate Park). This was very pretty and tranquil and we got really close to squirrels (Sarah do you remember our excitement in St. James Park with all the squirrels?!).

Since the weather was really good, we decided to jump on another bus and try our luck at the Golden Gate Bridge, where, fingers crossed, there would be no fog. Thankfully the weather held and we got stunning blue sky views of the bridge.

We then caught the bus back to Haight-Ashbury, wandered the main street, bought vegetables for dinner (this is worth mentioning because we have had so much trouble finding veggies, fruit is easy but veggies is so difficult!) and then headed back to the hostel.