Today's plan was to spend a bit less time walking than the last two days.

I caught the bus out to Golden Gate Park and first visited the California Academy of Sciences. This features a large planetarium, an indoor rainforest (which was bloody hot), a bunch of aquariums, and even a exhibit on Whales on loan from Te Papa! It was weird seeing a bunch of interviews with New Zealanders.

The rainforest dome was full of butterflies

The building has a living roof

While I was inside the fog had rolled in and the day had turned pretty bleak. There was also a strong cold wind blowing. I headed across the plaza to the de Young Art Museum. This had some pretty cool pieces but with art I generally like the stuff that looks the most realistic so I suspect a lot of it was wasted on me. In keeping with the New Zealand theme there was a section on Maori art with a cool video on an artist's work.

This was made using the remains of a church that was destroyed by arson. It's hard to tell from the photo but it's a cube shape and is suspended in the air,

My final goal for the day was to walk the rest of the park out to the Ocean Beach. I figured it couldn't be more than 30 minutes or so. I started out from de Young and about 40 minutes later came around a bend back where I started. Turns out half of the park maps are oriented East with the other half with West at the top. I started off again and this time made some progress. I passed by the Bison paddock where a herd of Bison are supposed to live. Unfortunately they were all inside a pen today so I could hardly see them. About an hour after setting off for the second time I finally made it to the beach.

I had imagined that beach front property would be pretty sought after but what I found looked pretty shabby. I caught the Metro back into town. It was kind of half train, half tram, in that it runs down the middle of the street further out before going into a tunnel closer to the central city. Like the city's buses it was fairly spartan however it did the job.

After I got back to the hostel I decided to measure my walking for the day: 10+ kms... So much for taking it easy.

Tomorrow's plan is a trip on the BART and Caltrain out to Redwood City to visit some car dealerships.