The California Academy of Sciences

David and I took the day off today and toured the newly refurbished California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. Even taking a day off in the middle of the week the place was JAMMED with school groups. I witnessed some of the worst pre-teen behaviour ever today - these kids are rude, loud, vulgar, and destructive! On top of it - a tour bus of aggressive non-english speaking Korean tourists showed up - and started forcefully pushed their way through the exhibits, taking photos where it explicitly said not to (so much flash at one point the octopus tried to hide). It was just such a terrible show of touristy ways. (Both groups tested my "be nice" policy)

But David and I chinned up - and worked our way through the displays and exhibits. Unfortunately - while the building is a staggeringly beautiful set up - the content of the building left us both sorta underwhelmed. The planetarium - which is pretty cool - showed a rather lackluster movie that didn't use the immense size of the dome to great affect until the closing credits. We also walked through the rain forest exhibit - which is one way in one way out. and the crowds of pushy tourists and loud fact-finding middle schoolers took the polish off the wow factor. It was wide open and any noise the 8 or 9 middle school groups wanted to make was contained inside.

Part of it is that the building is young - and literally in every presentation it started off with - "come back in four or five years when this grows into the exhibit it's going to be amazing." Still - the Phillipine Coral Reef was pretty darned cool - and I love aquariums! So - I would definitely recommend it - I think Dave and I went with our expectations set a bit too high.

I took gazillion photos - click here to see the photo set online

Dave and I both think we enjoyed the San Francisco Zoo more - but that is also because we went on a non-crowded day - and they offer a self-guided audio tour which we both enjoyed very much. The roof of the building - a rolling set of hills meant to mimick the hills of San Francisco - is all seedlings and will be just gorgeous as it grows in. We enjoyed very much the tour of "how the building was made". It's a shame that the architecture and green constructions stood out as the best exhibit over all the other science going on at the Academy site.