California vacay (cont.)

Check out my beach sunburn on my forehead!

Joy, right? But anyway...On our next day in the Bay Area, Tae + Rye + I joined up with Yuki + Toshi + Rena for a walking tour of San Francisco. Our tour guide explained how these work: people who love the city with a deep and abiding love volunteer (through the library, I believe) to give free historical tours to tourists and natives. Isn't that awesome?? 

The tour lasted for about two hours and we walked about one mile of distance, stopping frequently to hear stories related to the sights we saw. Here's our tour guide Spencer telling a story about newspaper rivalries and a sight to go with it:

And I mostly took pictures of plants like fuchsia and overgrown succulents. Cuz California grows cool plants.

We wrapped up our own tour by walking ourselves back to the car so that we could drive to Ghirardelli Square for ice cream. However, although that day had been incredibly warm--our tour guide called it the one warm day that San Francisco gets each year--it cooled off early, and I was freezing by the time we arrived for our treat. Yuki was so kind to treat us to whatever we chose, so I chose me the best hot chocolate I have ever had. If you are ever cold in San Francisco (which is typical), get yo'self some sea salt caramel Ghirardelli hot chocolate. Mmmmmmm.

Moving right along now to Sunday, which was the whole reason we even went on this trip. Cousin Tanya got married!! And it was one of the most scenic weddings ever, probably. I mean, look:

Beautiful people, beautiful venue, beautiful weather, and especially beautiful bride. Everything was beautiful! Have I said it enough yet? We loved celebrating with Tanya and Ashton, and--I'mma be honest here--I could not have been happier to try my first taste of Bluebell ice cream. Truly a momentous day.

We returned to the hotel after the wedding celebrations pretty tired but also super excited because the next day would bring the wonder of Google. Did you hear me?? GOOGLE, guys, like google.com! I have a fetish with Google about which I have blogged before, and fortunately I also have a cool cousin Caleb (alliteration unintended but neat) who works there. It's probably fate.

But we actually started the day with a visit to the Academy of Sciences, which was also pretty awesome, so I'll share some pics from there first. They have lots of science-y displays and toys + a planetarium show + an aquarium + an indoor rain forest + happiness. So you can see why it's awesome. 

I kind of obsessed over the rain forest because I was in plant heaven (+ butterflies, everywhere). I mean, who wouldn't want that display growing on their wall?! I know what you're thinking--did you only go to California to look at plants?--and I'm afraid that the answer is closer to yes than we would all like to admit. But most indoor plants grow naturally in tropical climates, so rain forest plants = house plants. It makes sense when you consider that indoor temperatures vary much less than outdoor temperatures for most of the world, excluding where? Well the equator, of course! So tropical plants just feel right at home inside in places where they would shrivel and die outside. Anyway. Back to the Academy.

The aquarium was a hit with the kiddos:

Look at Emerson finding Nemo and Dory! Adorable. I also taught him to say "anemone" and if I can ever figure out a good way to get a vertical video from phone to blog, I'll let you hear how adorable that was. 

And we went to the planetarium show, where we basically experienced a watered down version of my astronomy class last semester. I was underwhelmed and others were overwhelmed so that's weird. But we also heard a great joke:

Why is a moon rock tastier than an Earth rock?
It's a little meteor. 

[Except to make the joke truly accurate, you have to mumble "oid" at the end. Meteors have to still be flying through the atmosphere to be meteors, since once they hit Earth they become meteoroids. OH THE THINGS YOU LEARN.]

Anyway. Clearly I'm a little distracted by the science facts that want need to be expressed here, so since I've rambled about the Academy longer than planned, I'm going to go ahead and give Google + anything else I want to add about this trip the love they deserve in an upcoming post. Just you wait!


To be continued...(again)...