San Francisco: Day 4, 5, 6

Ugh.....I typed this post up already and stupid Blogger didn't save it. So here we go again....probably without as much excitement

Day 4:
After all of the hiking done the day before, I didn't want to do much walking. Plus, the temperatures had dropped from the nice 80s that we had been experiencing, to the lower 60s. I opted to visit SF Museum of Modern Arts. As I perused the different floor after floor of paintings, photography, and sculptures, I tried to see if I could be one of those true artistic people who can stare at a painting and tell you everything about the art work. LOL. Yeah....didn't work. However, I could appreciate it and enjoyed hearing more about the artists and their work with the audio tour that was provided.
*MJ and his monkey in the Pop culture room at SF MOMA

I left SF MOMA and headed to Fisherman's Wharf to board for my Alcatraz tour. For those of you who aren't familiar with Alcatraz, it was a Federal penitentiary decades ago that was home to the likes of criminals such as Alcapone and "Machine Man" Kelly. It was the most feared prison by criminals due to its strict rules and location on an inescapable island known as "The Rock".
We boarded the boat to head across the water to Alcatraz which lies about 1.5 miles away from San Francisco. Upon arriving at the island, we listened to the quick talk by the ranger, watched a video about the history of "The Rock", and then were left to explore the penitentiary. They offered their acclaimed interactive audio tour, which I utilized to explore the prison. It was awesome to hear, from actual former prisoners and staff, about how life was at Alcatraz, failed escape attempts, and about specific prisoners. One thing that I found to be interesting was that the prisoners found being able to actually see San Francisco at a distance and hear the noise from the city to be the most torturous thing, as they knew that the city was within reach, but that no escape attempts would ever allow them to cross the body of water that kept them away from the city. Even still, some still tried just because they were going crazy at Alcatraz. *On the boat to Alcatraz which is in the background

After returning to San Francisco, I went back to the hostel and retired early. But not without first meeting my funny new roommates from NY. They had me cracking up.

Day 5:
I started my day at the California Academy of the Sciences. I loved this place. I would definitely return in the future with my children (yes, I think about these things already). It has a natural history museum, a gorgeous aquarium, a rain forest, planetarium, garden, and living roof, all contained in the world's most green and platinum awarded, building. I started on the roof, reading and observing how the building was made to recycle water and nutrients, regulate temperature, and maintain the wild life in the building. . Next, I headed to the "Extreme Mammals" exhibit. Here they showed the evolution of various animals, body parts, etc. But, what really touched me about this exhibit was at the end where they showed a list of animals that had become extinct or are now near extinction due to humans. Some species are down to less than 1000 because we keep eating them, wearing them, taking pieces of them for other things, and what ever else we do. Humans are very destructive, not only to ourselves, but to the earth as we know it. smh
I headed to the rain forest where I saw different species of the most beautiful birds and butterflies flying around. The 4 floor exhibit held various unique rain forest animals as well as plant life. It was really nice. Of course I took tons of pics and made videos.
Next was the aquarium that I loved! Many of the sealife were from the coral reef of the Philippines. Absolutely gorgeous! There were several fish, and other aquatic creatures that I had never seen at any aquarium, such as the upside down jellyfish, for example. Someone made a comment about how many colors and beautiful things live down in the water, beyond what we see and how many of them we're probably killing with this stupid BP oil spill. Smh. Once again, humans, messing up everything.
Outside of the aquarium, in the area called The Swamp, I saw an albino alligator and in the African exhibit, I saw the cutest little penguins!
I ended up spending most of my day in this center. There was just so much to see and do. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go into the planetarium since they had given out all of the entrance tickets for the day. Next time!
*Diver in the Phillipines Coral Reef Exhibit surrounded by fish while giving a talk
*One of the many unique sea creatures, this is a special sea horse that has these look alike leaves on its body; a natural way to blend in with the environment & escape predators
*One of the butterflies in the rain forest
I left the center, which is one of the many things in the huge Golden Gate Park, and accidentally stumbled into the Botanical Gardens. I got lost amongst the pretty flowers and took tons of pictures. The place was so peaceful, yet so beautiful; ideal for a couples stroll (saw a few of these).
*Two of my favorite plants in the garden
Once I found my way out of the maze, I took the bus to the Haight area where all of the hippies of SF stay. Walking through there is really like a flashback to the 60s. Bright psychedelic colors, 60s clothes, people singing and saying promoting one love in the streets....truly funny.

I then headed to Chinatown where I decided to have dinner. I found a nice restaurant that was celebrating their anniversary with potstickers, green tea ice cream, and 20% of of your check. Great! I had lemongrass chili chicken with rice, which was good. However, my waitress was terrible. It took her forever to attend to me, and that only happened after she caught my eyes staring at her. After taking my order, I never saw her at my table again. She didn't check on me, although she checked on those around me, and the busboy was the one serving the food, and I had to call the hostess to get my check and clear my table, after waiting forever. I can't stand rude (racist) people. Whatever....
Afterwards, I walked back to my hostel, packed up and prepared for my departure the next day.

Day 6:
My flight was scheduled to be late at night, around 11:57pm. That meant that I would have to find something to do for the whole day, since I would have to checkout of my room. I had two more Citypass tickets which included a 1 hr boat ride on the Blue & Gold fleet and a pass to the Exploratorium. I also considered taking a day tour to Montery/ Carmel, south of San Francisco. But, I didn't want to have to do that. Instead, I decided to see if I could possibly fly standby for the 1:55pm flight.
I checked out and took one last walk down Powell street to Market street and got on the street car (aka train as they call it). I decided to take the advice of one of the hostel reps and headed to the Mission neighborhood to have breakfast. She had suggested I check out this place called Pork Store, that sold typical American breakfast food, but also mentioned the Crepe place right next to it. I was really looking forward to the Crepe place, but got there (after an unnecessary walk as per the suggestion of someone on the bus; I guess I couldn't leave SF without one more hike) and it was closed. Bummer! I went to the Pork place instead, and ordered eggs, hasbrowns, and biscuits. The eggs had fresh salsa, spinach, and mushrooms. It was good (but not the crepes that I wanted). I left with my full belly, only to see the Crepe place now open....grrr! Oh well.
I took the BART metro to the airport, hoping and praying that I'd be able to get on this flight. Otherwise, I would have made my day even more complicated. I got to the counter, and the man told me what I didn't want to hear: there were a lot of people trying to find standby and he'd recommend that I just stick with my flight. Sigh....great! Now what? I tried to figure out what to do to head back into the city. I decided to at least try to put myself on the next standby list for the 10pm. My luck, the woman I spoke to this time pretty much said that the man didn't know what he was talking about and that she was pretty sure that I would be able to get on the flight. Yes! Thank God! He always comes through.....I ran down to the terminal, praying the whole way that they'd be able to put me on. They were able to and not only that, but I was sitting in business class!! Yes!
*Bye Bye San Francisco! Hello business class!
I finally got to experience what it was like to sit in those spacious, comfortable business class seats (without anyone next to me, woohoo!)and have people attend to you every few minutes with offers of drinks, "salties", and "sweets". It was nice. Some people, who also just ended up in business class didn't know how to act with their taking 2-3 stacks per round, and ordering alcoholic beverages as much as they could. lol. They were so excited though. It did suck that we had some maintenance issues that had us waiting for 1 1/2 before we could take off and that threw off everyone's connecting flight. Mind you, the flight that I was supposed to take from ATL was to depart 35 minutes after our original departure time. That clearly wasn't going to happen. But, God worked it out. There were weather issues in ATL that caused 2-3 hour flight delays at the airport. So, even though I had missed that flight, there was as flight that was supposed to have left at 8:55pm and was now to depart at 11:55pm. Yes! I wouldn't have to sleep at the airport after all (some people had to be put in hotels because the next flight to their destination wasn't leaving until the next day). Everything worked out!


All in all, San Francisco was fun. It was nice to have some alone time to reflect on things and to just get away. But, now I'm happy to be back with friends and family:)