San Francisco –Golden Gate Park
I remember my visit to the Golden Gate Park with mixed feelings. The good – there is a lot to do at Golden Gate Park, and it is beautiful. The bad – someone broke into my parked car and stole a small bag.
Let’s start with the good.
The Golden Gate Park reminded me of Central Park in New York. I believe it was designed by the same person or the designer was inspired by Central Park. Similar to Central Park I don’t believe it is possible to get through it all in one day.
I mainly went to the park to visit The de Young Art Museum and the California Academy of Sciences.
The day I went it was raining quite a bit in the morning. I put the address of De Young’s museum in my GPS and it was able to lead me to the place. I noticed there was free road side parking available in the park and I parked on one side, near the rose gardens in the park.
The de Young Art Museum
The gardens/area between The de Young Art Museum and The California Academy of Sciences is beautifully landscaped. It reminded me of the area you need to walk through to get to Champs Elysees from Louvre in Paris. Interestingly this park reminded me of Paris and New York. I guess it is human nature to draw comparisons.
The California Academy of Sciences
I enjoyed my time at the California Academy of Sciences much better than the Art Museum. I wasn’t expecting to. This place has an indoor rain forest that is 3 floors high, a wonderful aquarium (I have been to Ripley’s aquarium in Toronto and Monterey aquarium in California), educational and interesting exhibits, a live roof garden, and a planetarium. I wish I had more time so I could have spent it reading and learning more of the exhibits. If I lived here, I would get a season pass to this place.
The Japanese Tea Garden
This is right beside The de Young museum, and is charming. It costs $8 to go in. I saw it from outside. To me it didn’t seem worthwhile. Depends on your interest I guess.
The Break-in
When I walked back to my car around 4 pm, I found that one of my passenger windows had been smashed in for the bag I left covered in the back seat . Bad San Francisco . In my defense, I had a Yaris as a rental car, and it did not have a covered trunk. Nevertheless, I should have left my bag in the trunk. After some minutes of sadness, I called my rental company. I had rented my car using TD Gold Visa. This card has car insurance on rental cars when you pay fully for the rental using your card. The lady was kind, took my information and provided me with a claim number. I called SF’s police number and they were kind enough to collect my information over the phone and generate a police report ( if in case I needed for the accident ) . I found this to be very convenient . I was very glad I didn’t have to go to a station to report the break in. I drove to the SF airport to switch out my rental car. The nice man at the counter upgraded my car to a Toyota Corolla. I was happy. My Yaris sucked, and didn’t have a lot of power on the hills. The break-in wasted 3 hours of my time, lost a bag, an old phone and two chargers, however, I got a better car. I was happy for that since I was going to drive down Highway 1 to Big Sur and Morro Bay the next day.