Academy of Sciences and Botanical Gardens

The sleep came all too easily without melatonin, but waking up in the morning was a struggle even after 12h sleep. Eventually when I had managed to force myself out of bed, I headed towards the huge Golden Gate Park (which is logically not next to the bridge). Getting out of the Union Square area was a relief - actual people and not just tourists and shops! Height St seemed like an amazing area, and the houses near the Golden Gate Park were beautiful three-story wooden pretties in pastel colours.

In the park itself I visited Academy of Sciences, and it was not exactly what I expected (I think I was described the Exploratorium by the boyfriend and I got the two mixed up). This first made me rather disappointed, but then I realised that the Academy had amazing birds, butterflies, chameleons and other reptiles, and much better aquarium than the one I visited on Monday! My favourites were electric eels, as well as the jellyfish (Pacific nettle?) once again. But what made the visit great was the very impressive Life: A Cosmic Story shown in the planetarium. The show began with a redwood forest and continued with zooming in all the way to inside the leaf through stomata, and then into the cell and the chloroplast to see photosynthesis as a molecular level animation! Most of the rest was stars and galaxies, and I was totally immersed into the show and not able to walk straight for the next hour. All in all, the scientific content and topics like climate change and evolution were well presented and I think the Academy is awesome. Oh, except there is a cafe where everything is sold in plastic cases, just next to the climate change exhibit urging people to use less plastic.

My second stop in the park was the Botanical Gardens. The first area I happened to walk into was Australian flora, and it had quite a few familiar banksias and kangaroo paws, which made me smile. The main attraction obviously was the sequoias, or the coastal redwoods. They were red and huge, as expected. The weather wasn't the greatest, so I headed back home after relatively short time in the gardens. I did have time to notice great numbers of squirrels who started following me in the hopes of a snack, which was slightly disturbing. I'm not squirrel food! The rest of the gardens seemed to contain plants from other Mediterranean climate areas in addition to California and Australia, namely South Africa, South Americas as well as Mediterranean itself.

On the way home I did a spot of shopping for good quality skincare products, as my skin seems to hate long-distance flights and is about as jetlagged as rest of my body. I also ventured into Tiffany's to declare their selection all too small for my tastes! Right now I'm doing laundry and I think it's the time to put my washing into the dryer!