Team Hollowell: Golden Gate Park

Thursday morning, we woke up (after another hot night in the apt) and had breakfast at Plow in Protrero Hill.

This fun door was right across the street from the restaurant.

It was a cute restaurant and really good!

French toast - what else would I get at brunch??

After we fueled up, we spent the rest of the day in Golden Gate Park. First up - Conservatory of Flowers.

We scored a SF resident discount and walked through the buildings. It's not a huge building - but you walk through the sections of the buildings and it changes based on where the plants/trees live and thrive.

I love you coffee plant.

This was the potted plants section... and it was one of my favorites! There were orchids everywhere you looked and I loved all of the pots hanging. So much green and color.

Next up - we walked to the Academy of Sciences. It was a gorgeous day - and it wasn't too hot since we were close to the water in Golden Gate Park.

We walked in and decided to check out the rainforest exhibit first. We walked into the exhibit (shown in the sphere glass below). Inside the dome, a magnificent neotropical rainforest stretches 90 feet above. Following the spiral path up through the sphere, there are three levels of rainforest from three distinct ecosystems: a Bornean forest floor, a Madagascan mid-story, and the canopy of a Costa Rican forest. It's four stores of a beneath-the-surface view of an Amazonian flooded forest. At each level, we learned about the environment and animals that call these forests home.

As we walked higher, it became hotter and hotter. I was sweating by the time we got to the top.

Butterflies are everywhere - flying freely in the dome.

Then we headed down to the bottom floor - where all of the water and sea creatures were. This was a HUGE anaconda. EWWWWWWW.

Tripp sticking his hand in the anaconda squeeze simluation ;) We are such kids.

These were dragon fish - the craziest lookin' things I've ever seen.

The earthquake exhibit was awesome - and also scary since it's so relevant here in SF. We stepped into the "Shake House" that was the earthquake simulator. We experience the tremors of San Francisco's two biggest quakes—the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake and the 7.9-magnitude Great San Francisco quake of 1906—from inside the dining room of a Victorian-era "Painted Lady" house. It has audio and then you have to hold onto the bars to stay standing. Crazy.

Watched the sharks get fed.

The whales exhibit - this is me inside of a whales heart. "Children Only" = Katie even more interested. Tripp wouldn't go inside so I checked it out :)

This was the Color of Life exhibit - I LOVE color and this was awesome. The exhibit is about exploring color’s influence on animal behavior in a variety of habitats, from ocean floors to forest canopies.

Penguin feeding! Tripp and I sat down on the floor with the rest of the group to watch this. They were so stinkin' cute and ready to eat! As we were watching the feeding, we looked around and realized we were the only adults there without kids... but just as excited as the kids haha.

I didn't get a picture of the last exhibit we did because no cameras were allowed, but it was SO cool. We watched the "Habitat Earth" presentation in Morrison Planetarium. It is a huge 75-foot dome that feels like you are in a movie theater - but so much more. It displays one of the most accurate—and immersive—digital Universes ever created.

I'm so glad we went to both of these places in Golden Gate Park - If we lived in SF long-term, I think we would visit the Academy of Sciences as the exhibits changed.

Afternoon snack at The Mill.