Friday we spent most of our day at the Golden Gate Park. First, we toured the Japanese Tea Garden. There were some impressive greenery sculptures, rock bridges and koi. Much to Ben's disappointment, we didn't actually have any tea, but did get the full experience otherwise.
Our next stop was the California Science Center. There was a very educational exhibit about earthquakes and what to do in the event of one. I thought for sure this would put James' anxiety over the edge, especially when we went into the "earthquake house" simulator. He handled the whole thing well and the more questions he was able to pepper the museum staff with the better he seemed to feel;) This museum also housed a planetarium, an aquarium AND a four story indoor rainforest. The kids certainly enjoyed themselves, but I think they were getting a bit of museum fatigue, so we cut a few things short and left at lunchtime.
We explored the children's playground in the park which everyone enjoyed. After that we headed back to our house for some much needed downtime, a dip in the hot tub and some Halloween crafts.
Saturday we did a little of everything which was ironic because we hadn't planned ahead much for this day. We took the Muni (subway) in to explore Chinatown. Once we made it through the Dragon Gate we found ourselves walking up and up perusing the various gift shops and food shops. The sights and sounds were new to the kids and they seemed fairly fascinated by the whole experience. We found our way down a back alley to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory. Apparently, fortune cookies do not come from China, but were an American invention and it wasn't until a few decades ago that fortune cookies even made their way to China. The process of making fortune cookies was surprisingly simplistic, the kids were enthralled.
After leaving the factory we continued the uphill climb to the Cable Car Museum. Although there were certainly some cool museum components, the best part for all of us was that it was an actual working garage where all the cables to run the cable cars ran through.
On our descent we stopped off for a dim sum lunch. I was afraid the kids would balk at the whole thing, but they did a fantastic job trying each of the dishes as they came. We picked up a few souvenirs at the shops and headed back to the Muni.
We stopped off at our house to grab the kids costumes then headed to the San Francisco Zoo for their "Boofest" celebration. It was neat to see the animals playing with and, in some cases, eating pumpkins.
We were afraid this would be our last sunny/fog free day here, so we had a quick dinner and hopped in the car to explore the western coast/cliffs of the city. Our first/last stop was the beach. Gabe and I thought we would all walk down the beach, get a nice picture with the bridge in the background and the kids would play in the sand for a bit before leaving making the whole thing a quick stop over... We should really know better by now... the kids took their shoes off and immediately waded into the water. Before we knew it Ben got knocked over by a big wave and his clothes were completely soaked. Then James got knocked over and almost lost his glasses, even his fleece coat was soaked. Despite this, all 4 kids continued to frolic in the water for a long time until we pulled them away. On the walk back to the car they were bemoaning the fact that if we had just brought their bathing suits this wouldn't have happened... They all road home naked...
No comments:
Post a Comment