San Francisco: Take one, the countryside.

After the Hazon Conference B and I spent a few days in San Francisco visiting his aunt, famous restaurants and intersections, and hugging redwoods.



The Painted Ladies. You can see the slope of the street.

The hippie in me had to, even though this is a horrible picture. We went shopping here and checked out a bunch of vintage shops. There is also a really awesome sock store where I found turquoise merino wool tights by hue. I decided not to buy them because I thought I could find them at home. I have had zero luck finding them online and haven't had time to go shopping in actual stores. :(

Dutch Windmills! There are two but the other one is under restoration.

the Botanic Garden. Can you see the awesome sunclock?

Bison! There have been Bison kept in Golden Gate Park for many years. I think it started around the turn of the century but I don't remember.


California Academy of Science is located in Golden Gate Park and is a natural history museum, a planetarium and an aquarium. It is huge! It was also packed being over Christmas holidays the kids were out of school and it was therefore crazy. Note to self do not go to museums over school breaks. I LOVE taking pictures at aquariums. I always get images that are extremely beautiful, graceful, colorful and serene (in contrast to the actual environment of the aquarium). I have a ton of aquarium pictures and I want to do a separate post of them so the extreme beauty can be fully enjoyed.

The are some kind of eel. I don't remember what they are called but they pop out of the sand at the bottom to feed and they are very small.

I love this guy. He posed for me and was very patient with me as I took a lot of pictures because I couldn't get him in focus.

Jellyfish are the epitome of photgoraphic beauty.


Sea dragons are my favorite. They are also everyone else's favorite too. They are very light sensitive and their tanks had a no photography sign on them. I think because people use their flash too much (a pet peeve of mine) I never use a flash anyway so I went ahead a took pictures. All the other people around the tank were making comments about me.



I have become interested in taxidermy. Weird, I know. I don't want to be a taxidermist I have just been interested in looking at it and in related objects. Like those frames of different species of butterflies pinned to a board. I think my fascination with Jan Svankmajer's Alice started it and Sleep No More fueled it. The jar and the skulls are from the naturalist's center. They have all kinds of stuff on display and they have a great library where you can do research. Members of the museum are also able to check out the books. I found a few titles I would like to read there. The leopard is from the old part of the natural history museum.

The Eco-roof. It is created in hills to imitate the hills of the local landscape. Circular windows are part of a computerized heating and cooling system. The air from outside is circulated within the museum. They also keep beehives and have botany studies on the roof.