First Sunday in San Francisco

It's my first Sunday living in San Francisco. Yesterday, which I actually didn't mention in the previous post, I accidentally overslept until about 5pm. Truthfully, that doesn't happen often, but I guess after the first week of living roughly six hours away from home as well as a week of internship orientation and cram/boot camp like training, Saturday was my day to just pass out and get a good, long, day of rest.

But enough of that. Today, I got up relatively early, about 10:00am, and got ready. My flatmates and I heard that it was a free admission day at the Academy of Science Museum. The museum opens at 11:00am which was about the time we got there and to our dismay we were greeted by a seriously long line that seemed to just stretch on forever! So we decided not to wait that long in a line and walked across the street to check out the Japanese Tea Garden.

Which was just absolutely beautiful.

If you know me, I love these sort of gardens (well, I actually love all types of gardens). It was just luscious with all kinds of beautiful trees, shrubbery, waterfalls and ponds filled with a ton of koi fish~

Japanese gardens truly have the best ponds ever. They're always so big and beautiful.

Speaking of koi fish, they were super awesome and some of them were just huuuuge! The following photo was actually an accident while I was snapping shots of them which is funny because photographers usually say the best photos are accidents. I like to agree.

Pretty awesome, right?!

For the heck of it, here's another shot of a bunch of pretty and awesome koi fishies because you honestly can't get enough of them, haha.

I'll also go ahead and give a few other shots of the garden because it's honestly an awesome sight to see~

Later, we had a small lunch in the garden and I ordered this delicious and beautifully adorable mini bento meal with sesame fried chicken and rice balls. And let me just say, it was really flavorful and just so goooooooood.

Deliciousness presented in a super adorable and awesome way~

Also, there are a crap ton of squirrels in the garden, which is to be expected in any garden filled with a bunch of awesome trees. They were scurrying all over the place, hopping from one tree to the next, and chewing on nuts and other goodies they found. I took a few shots of couple of them, so this next photo is something I'd like to call "obligatory squirrel picture for my mom" because she goes nuts over squirrels (bad pun there, I know, haha).

This little guy was awesome. He totally loved posing and actually kept pretty still while I took a
couple shots of him. But then he ran away when he realized I didn't have any goodies for him.
Guess that's all us humans are good for, delicious nuts, haha.

After the Japanese Tea Garden, we actually headed back to the Academy of Science Museum. The line was practically not there anymore so we decided to take advantage of this and head on in. This museum is just awesome. It's the sort of museum I would love to go back to because there's so much stuff to see in there and I didn't get a chance to check out the beautiful greenhouse they have there. 

Since this post is actually getting pretty long now, I'm going to keep the rest as short and straight to point as much as I can, haha. Basically, we did a lot of walking around, saw some cool exhibits, and got to see an awesome 'Tour of the Universe' show in the planetarium at 3:30pm.

Did I mention they have rays there? Because they do and they're super awesome and I love rays. 

Also, they had a little swamp area and this guy is just hella cool. He's...or she's (can't remember now) is a Rare White Alligator. You can tell that it's an albino alligator by looking at its eyes. True albino alligators have pink eyes and lack the body pigment melanin. In lush green swamps, bright white stands out (as you can obviously see in the following picture) and a white alligator born in the wild would actually have a low chance surviving to adulthood.

Coolest looking alligator ever~!

Other than looking at other awesome sea life in the aquarium, we looked at stuffed animals (well, pretty sure they were....they looked like it.....who knows I could be wrong though, but usually they are), observed dead bird and bug specimens, read a lot of Earth history, and checked out awesome skeletons like the oh so popular t-rex, but even cooler a lemur!

Sorry for a relatively crappy photo here, but the skeleton was behind a glass which made it hard
to capture a good, clear shot of it. Many thanks goes to my Photoshop skills to help make this
a heck of a lot clearer.

Another cool part of the museum was the Global Climate Change and Carbon Footprint exhibit. This was one of the most interesting and informative sections of the museum. It was also relatively interactive which made it all more exciting to learn about.

This is actually taken right in front of that exhibit I just mentioned.
Look familiar?
It should because this is where my blog icon is from, haha.

So now I'm basically at the end of this post. Therefore I'd like to top it off by showing off one of the Academy of Science Museum's best spots, featuring mounds of native and drought resistant plant species..............ON THEIR ROOF!

Super cool, right?! I certainly thought so!

Here's a photo of the sign explaining how it all works and how it was created.
Hopefully it's clear enough for you to read. Sorry if it isn't.

Well, that's just about all I did today. I definitely had a lot of fun this weekend and am sure to have even more fun weekends to come. Not to mention, I'm also sure to have fun during my internship~!

With that, I wish everyone a lovely night~

Until next time,

~Sara