Exploratorium

Seeing as though trekking around the city with Leah on Monday was so much fun, we decided to do it again on Tuesday. Lombard st. and the Marina district were on our agenda. Lombard st. if you've never heard of it, is a squiggly street that is too steep to be straight, the road snakes all the way down and cars have to negotiate the tightest corners. The hills in San Francisco are absolutely insane, almost vertical actually and I don't how people don't just tumble down them. Leah and I were not going to try and walk any of them. So we caught the cable car and hopped off at this crazy but very pretty road.


Keith waited until it was safe to pose.


We walked for a good hour or so around the finest San Francisco neighbourhoods, the houses are beautiful, but really, imagine hauling your shopping up these mammoth hills, never mind parking your car on them!

Checking our map again for a good place to stop, we realised that we weren't very far from the Palace of Fine Arts...and wow, what a building....


Inside lies the Exploratorium, a museum of wackiness that has a whole load of things to tinker about with, such as a tornado simulator which we had fun jumping in and out of. It's a place full of fun science aparatus and galleries of eye trickery. One of the staff sat down with us and showed us some pretty cool card tricks.

Leah had to catch her plane that evening so we decided that we had explored enough and should make our way back downtown. While queuing up for the cable car, we experienced some very painful banjo - the busker just didn't get the hint that no one was enjoying it. There were no smiles in that queue and we were all thinking the same thing: 'who told you that it was a good idea to do Beatles covers on a frickin' banjo?!' all I needed was for a few pan-pipe players to show up and it would have been a living hell.

So naturally, I was devastated to say goodbye to my new friend. She had become my rock, my buddy and the only thing that kept me sane during my stay in San Francisco. I settled down for a quiet night back at the hostel, looking forward to Wednesday morning when one of my best friends whom I haven't seen in three years was coming to scoop me up and take me away.