So today, the last day of our month long journey, is upon us and we soaked it in for what it was and what it meant.
We began our day after actually having slept till 7:30 am. Amazing for a jetlag weary family. We headed over to the Ferry Building for a breakfast and Blue Bottle mocha--probably my favorite coffee company, anywhere. The Ferry Building is great for its variety. We got some Argentinian empanadas from a local Argentinian vendor and we sat outside on the water and literally soaked in the amazing San Fran weather. I don't think I've ever been to San Francisco and had this good of weather--especially in the summer. But this has been perfect weather and it's been a lovely way to end this trip.
Then we caught a cab to the Exploritorium, a museum for all ages that describes itself as a museum of art, science and human perception. It's hands on and is really about the intersections of how we experience reality in relation to art and the sciences. It's housed near the water in the old Palace of Fine Arts--an ornate building purpose built for the San Francisco World's Fair in the early years of the 20th Century. The inside housed all the fine arts on display from all over the world. But now it's the Exploritorium.
This is a picture of the interior of the building before they built it out as the Exploritorium.
Sorry for the blur. This is what it looks like now.
There are so many hands on displays and experiments here that it's actually a bit overwhelming. Declan in particular really loved the displays and learned all about things like color perception, vortex, light spectrum, partical accelerators, zoetropes, wind velocity, probability, magnetism, simple pulleys, gears, and on and on. I think we may have done about a fourth of all there was to do here. But at some point we just petered out and our brains had hit max capacity. Do you ever experience this at museums. It's also how I experience art museums. I feel brain fatigue after a few hours. So we grabbed a very surprisingly healthy cafe lunch here (I say healthy because after all, this IS San Francisco).
And after we'd had our homeschool field trip, we decided to walk over to the beach next to the old Crissy Field airport, which is now just an open field with buildings from the time before WWII.
This is the only beach I've ever been to in San Francisco. This part of Northern California is known more for rocky beaches than real sand ones. But today the weather was amazing and we were going to make the most of it. Econ Man had a little shut eye on a barrier wall, and the boys did what little boys do best--build things in the sand.
(That's Alcatraz on the island in the distance.)
Dash practiced his Kung Fu with a fighting stick (after being in Asia my boys are REALLY into Kung Fu moves).
When we wanted to leave we couldn't find a taxi, which seems to be a problem in this city. It's the only city I've ever been to where taxis are really hard to come by--unless you are very near a true tourist zone. We called two cab companies and waited for a little over half an hour for one to arrive. We finally returned back to the hotel in time to head out for dinner at a little Southern comfort food hideaway near Union Square and Chinatown. We all toasted an amazing journey's end and ate our hearts out on true Southern food prepared by authentic Southerners. And then Tess and Dash fell asleep, and Declan drew this picture.
We returned to pack and then Econ Man took Declan out for some daddy time at the Cheesecake Factory while Dash and Tess and I had mommy time.
Tomorrow's departure comes early. We'll be sad to leave but so happy to once again sleep in our own beds tomorrow night. As they say, the best thing about going away is coming home.
Who knows, maybe when Tess is 3 we'll be crazy enough to try this around the world thing once again...
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