By Aurora (and her mum)...

Tuesday 22 July 2008

Today we walked to the beautiful rose gardens that were in the Golden Gate Park. The roses were mixed with lovely colours and some were one colour. All the flowers had unique smells but dad kept saying they smelt like honey. (Ashlen loved the rose garden quizzing me on all the names of the roses and wanting to smell each and every one of them. She even wanted to make her own up, wanting to call it Roman Catwhiskers which I think is a pretty cool name, don't you?!)
(On the way to finding the Botanical Gardens and Conservatory of Flowers, we walked off on another track which took us to Stow Lake in the park. It was a lake - complete with turtles sunning themselves - around a little mountain which we climbed up and once again had great 360 degree view of the city. By now all our legs aren't hurting as much, so we are managing the hills a lot quicker. We also came across a real log cabin, exciting stuff!)
After that we went to the Botanical Gardens (also in the GGP). At the botanical gardens we went to see plants from other countries and my favourite one was Australia. My favourite plant was the kangaroo paw. Soon I gave a squirrel a bean chip and it ran up the tree with the bean sticking out of it's mouth. (Squirrels were everywhere and so so cute with big personalities. They would get quite close to you - sometimes right up to you if you had food - when you weren't looking and would even stare you in the eye but if you moved they would pounce up a tree. They had us in stitches all day with their antics and it was weird seeing them amongst Aussie plants)
Next we went to the Conservatory of Flowers (which was like a big green house with beautiful domed ceilings adorned with decorative glass). At the Conservatory there were 4 options of rooms, for example potted plants, special exhibits, highland tropics and aqua plants. First we went to potted plants. It had plants in pots and butterflies flying around. Soon we entered special exhibits. In special exhibits there were big bugs that were fake (as part of a butterfly display, however, for some reason there was an exhibit piece on Australian bats and sugar gliders. People were amazed with the butterflies and so were the kids. However there was only a few butterflies and thanks to the Coffs butterfly house my kiddies were the envy of everyone because they knew how to catch them on their fingers).
Then we went to the highland tropics. There were lots of tall trees but no butterflies (also lots of climbing plants like vines). After that we went to aquatic plants. (Plants like lily pads and huge bell looking things which bugs fly in and drown - very cool) My favourite bit was the leaves that you put water on and it looked like a bubble (entertained them for ages with the weird waterproof texture that I had to drag them away, I'm sure Ashie soon would have jumped in the pond soon enough if I hadn't). Next we went back to special exhibits, Ethan and I held a monarch butterfly. When we came out we walked to the De Young Museum (an art gallery in the GGP which displayed contemporary and native American art aswell as Oceania art. Aurora was fascinated by the paintings and was analysing them, stopping to watch a video on an artist using all his tools and I wasn't allowed to move her on until she was ready, very serious stuff. Ethan enjoyed the native art.) There were lots of wonderful pieces of art and my favourite one was the two bird paintings. They were painted on volcanic ash and limestone sheets and were very old.

(To finish the day off we had a humungous pizza complete with extra tubs of chilli flakes and Parmesan cheese, it was divine..mmmmm)

We're popping photo's in reverse order today (or rather it is late and I'm trying sooo hard to get this blog updated before it is out of control)

So here is the De Young with some Central American native art,

I added this photo because Damien timed it so well, click on it to make it larger and check out my jumping bean.

This whole building was covered in these metal discs and you can make out the name because they left those metal pieces flat instead of doming them. Very textural and cool to look at.

The Conservatory of Flowers, a very striking building.

Featured here is the potted room and the aqua room.

At Stow Lake, check out these turtles stretching out their legs. Hilarious to find these things in a city!

One of the gorgeous roses from the rose garden at the Golden Gate Park.

Aurora at one with nature, she managed to coerce a squirrel to take a bean chip and Damien clicked right at the perfect moment as these quirky creatures are very quick.

Click on this one to make it bigger. Check out the bird, it's a humming bird! There were quite a few of these in the Botanical Gardens and were such a delight to watch and they don't hum as much as they make a squeaky noise.