San Francisco

I recently attended the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, and spent an extra week in the city playing tourist. I'm one who typically cringes at Christmas songs being played in all the shops, and everyone and everything being decorated - but I loved how it was done in San Francisco.

With the Asian Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the California Academy of Sciences, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, hills and just walking around a different city, I had more than enough to fill my second week in San Francisco.

I thought that the Japanese section would be my favourite - instead it turned out to be Korean!

The AGU Fall Meeting poster hall on the Friday afternoon. Imagine all these boards filled on both sides with posters. And new posters for each of the five days of the conference. Then there's the oral presentations...

The view from my second hotel room.

The Bay Bridge. I love that it's a double-decker bridge!

To market, to market! Lots of organic produce and yummy food at the farmers' market near the Ferry Building.
Plenty of people too!

Cable cars!

Hills!

Food vans and carts!

Cycled from the city to Sausalito using a non-descript rental bike. I really missed my own bike that day, with its nicer gearing and tendency to roll indefinitely on even the smallest of slopes! I had to pedal downhill with the rental!

It was hard (impossible?) to find real coffee in San Francisco. So I was surprised when I got latte art with my coffee in Sausalito. That being said, I picked that cafe/diner as I could smell the coffee...
And that teaspoon was completely normal-sized.

Passing Alcatraz on the ferry back from Sausalito.

SF Museum of Modern Art

The view from the parkland near the Legion of Honor.

I really loved the Legion of Honor. Easily my favourite of the art gallery/museums!
(There were sections in the Asian Art Museum that made me uneasy - I have a similar issue with the Garden Gnome section of gardening stores in insufficient light).

The western coastline.

One of the windmills at Golden Gate Park

Views from the de Young Museum's observational tower

The California Academy of Sciences building!

More hills!

The start of the Alcatraz evening tour!

The view of the city at night from Alcatraz

The California Academy of Sciences has some fantastic installations, first up was the Steinhart Aquarium and the rainforest dome. These two were gorgeous!

Claude, the albino alligator.

There were a couple of reindeer outside! This was the recently named "Orion".

Then there was the Kimball Natural History Museum.

With African penguins. :)

It was a bit of a miserable day, so I didn't explore Golden Gate Park that much.
The Shakespeare Garden was near CAS.