June 18, 2017 - Day 7

No rushing for us this morning. Our first big plan of the day was to go to the children's science museum, the Exploratorium. It didn't open until 10am, and since we were all up by 6:45, we had plenty of time for a good breakfast. We walked a block or so down the street to the Cable Car Cafe. Not bad. Lovely people working there, decent diner food.

After breakfast, we stopped by Union Square. Not a lot going on there at 8:30 on a Sunday morning. From there, we caught a bus over to the museum. And guess what? We still had an hour to kill until it opened! Should've watched more TV in our hotel room (or slept later. ha.).

Mad because she wanted to be in the photo by herself and she asked for a photo first. (He did jump in there rather rudely.)

What a long hour that turned out to be. The kids were fighting and bugging each other, which was bugging Andrew. I was surprisingly not bothered (this time) by the fighting so was trying to mellow everyone out. We separated the kids, checking out different mini-exhibits in the lobby. This hour did turn out to be a great time for extra coffee. So there's that. I also bought us all a giant cookie to share because Vacation.

When the doors opened, we barely even knew what to check out first. This place is HUGE and all very hands-on. It's open-flow, so no path to travel around or loop to make. Every exhibit is designed to be touched, manipulated, explored, and figured out. We all had a great time.

 

This was a fun one. Andrew called this phone from down the way (see below). When Olive answered, he gave her a code to unlock the door. Inside the door was a video screen of the caller (Andrew, in this case) and he could then see a video the person who answered the phone.

Intently working on my sand art.

Spinning dizzy chair.

The kids chose markers, then swung the platform around until they liked the pattern it would draw. See below for our final masterpiece.

Milo was willing to try out the toilet drinking fountain.

Olive preferred the standard-looking drinking fountain, even though both had fresh clean water.

This little room was awesome. Yellow light made everything look yellow, but when you shined a little flashlight on things in the room, you could see their colors.

Human kaleidoscope! (And no, I do not know what face I am making.)

This cool mirror made us all look upside down.

Rainbow shadows!

Took a break for lunch at the museum's restaurant, The Seaglass Cafe. The food was pretty high-quality, we thought, though one of our children wouldn't even eat his or her macaroni and cheese. Typical. Back into the museum after lunch, where we explored til around 2.

Our plan for the rest of the day was to head over to Golden Gate Park. We had researched the night before what route to take. Underground or bus? Uber? What would be the best option? In the end we settled on taking the bus. Our first bus was fine, then we had a transfer. And that's where we ran into trouble. We were looking for the #7 bus, but saw a stop with #7x and wrongly assumed that was the same thing. After wondering and wondering why no #7 bus was coming after 30 minutes, I started asking the drivers of other buses where to get the #7, and the two drivers I asked pointed to a spot half a block up. So we went there, and within minutes a #7 bus arrived. Coming from around a corner instead of down the street. Damn. We probably missed at least the first two buses that came by because we were staring the wrong direction. It was so hot again today. Standing there, waiting for a bus that never seemed to come, did not cool us off. (And the bus we did get on was like an oven, seriously. I've never sweated so much sitting still.)

(Side note to mention Bus Anecdotes: This morning there was a fight on the bus because a man who clearly had some mental illness really needed the windows shut and another man did not like him leaning across, trying to shut his window. On the first afternoon bus, I told the kids to take a seat, then noticed that the lady a few inches from Olive was not only super drunk, but also had her pants (and underwear) pulled down to mid-thigh. Naked butt on the seat. My takeaway: observe the area before having your kids sit. Also, SF has a big homeless/mental illness problem.)

(Side side note: Later in the evening we saw a totally nude man saunter through the crowd. He wore socks, shoes, and an extra sock to cover his twig and berries. Thankfully the kids had their backs turned and missed his little display.)

So anyway. Bus to Golden Gate Park, finally. Olive fell asleep on the bus, so Andrew carried her for a bit as we made our way over to the Conservatory of Flowers. The park was pretty, but OMG I was still so stinking hot and the sun was everywhere. We had to stand in a line to get into the conservatory. I guess it was pretty neat in there, but for the most part I was only mildly impressed. The heat does that to me. They did have one special GIANT FLOWER there that bloomed last week or something. It only blooms once a year. It was honestly about four feet tall. And there was a butterfly garden, which Olive adored. I do enjoy seeing my children enjoy things. At one point, Olive asked to feel this little waterfall. I gave her the go-ahead, and when she stuck her hand in, she exclaimed, "It isn't glass, it really is water!"

Pretending to be monkeys and pointing at the bananas.

The enormous flower. Olive is Unimpressed. Or mad at her brother. One of those, though.

Trying to get the butterfly to walk on her hand.

The butterflies were her favorite.

Next was the search for a bathroom, then over the the kids' playground and carousel. The carousel was closing as we got there, which I didn't mind at all. We spent quite a bit of time at the playground, though. There was this concrete slide going down a hill. The kids there grabbed pieces of cardboard from a big pile at the bottom, climbed up, then slid down on the cardboard. I was really impressed with how Milo and Olive observed the other kids, then just jumped in to try it. Olive flipped over at one point and scraped her elbow. She got bandaged up, and we were glad to see that she was willing to go slide down again (though she did hold her injured arm up for the next hour).

Andrew and I wanted to see more of the park, but I don't think the kids had it in them at this point. We left the park around 5pm and walked back east along Haight. The Entire Street Smelled Like Pot And I Am Not Even Making That Up. At times I didn't even see any people who could've been smoking, yet the pot smell was so strong it was like someone right next to me was smoking.

We got pizza for dinner (two nights in a row--hooray for pizza!), then caught the bus back to the cable car stop. And because we weren't sure what our transit options were, we stuck with the cable car. Andrew and kids watched the breakdancers there for awhile and I took line duty. Eventually we got back to our hotel. We had promised the kids ice cream earlier in the day, and since we couldn't find any at Golden Gate Park (during our very limited exploring), Andrew took the kids upstairs since they had to go potty while I went to the market across the street and got little ice cream bars for us all. Also picked up a container of raspberries since I knew Olive would eat them (girl needs nutrition!) and some beer. I was pleasantly surprised to find the store carried not only Boulevard, but perhaps my new favorite Boulevard, the tropical pale ale. We enjoyed our desserts al hotel floor.

This was our last night of vacation, so Andrew and I packed as much as we could, got the kids off to bed (poor exhausted Milo couldn't fall asleep til almost 9:30), drank a beer or two, and whispered together by the window in the dark. Tomorrow we go home--and we are all ready.