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Monday, August 17, 2009

Akit's Furlough Adventure #2 - Twin Peaks & Cal Academy of Sciences

Just one vote made the difference between going to the Rockridge district of Oakland and Twin Peaks. This furlough adventure winner is Twin Peaks.

Unfortunately, today was a terrible day at Twin Peaks, the fog ruined the view. After a few minutes of snapping photos, I scrapped this trip.
Twin PeaksTwin Peaks

After bailing on Twin Peaks, I decided to go visit the Cal Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, and got sort-of lucky at the parking garage with a parking space of this complicated and expensive parking lot. $2.75 an hour... damn!

Cal Academy of Sciences

Since I have membership to the Academy, it was quite easy to get in, but as usual, it's tourist season and the damn place was packed. I arrived at about 11AM and the planetarium show tickets were given out for the 3PM showing. Take my advice, don't go to the 3D Bugs movie, the screen is small, and they allow screaming babies and kids who likes to kick your seat.

One of my favorite exhibits is the African Penguins. They are so cute! And when they swim in the water, they always go against the glass to play around with the visitors.
African Penguins

One of the best features of the Cal Academy is the aquarium, and especially the Philippine Coral Reef exhibits, including the one where a diver enters the aquarium and talks to the host of the program. One item of note, every time they do one of those diver showings, it's a fire hazard because people are spilling out in the aisles and folks are sitting all over the floor.
Philippine Coral Reef

If haven't had the chance, go to the rainforest exhibit in the big glass dome. It's quite humid inside, but you get to see all kinds of birds, butterflies, odd looking fish, and plenty more. The wait is 15 minutes to get in, but it's well worth the wait.
RainforestRainforest Habitat

And don't forget the site of the former 74X CultureBus! Rest in peace... but Muni forgot to paint over the damn yellow signage.
Site of the former 74X CultureBus

As for lunch... thanks to Oprah's failed KFC bit, I finally was able to claim my free meal. The chicken pieces are so small! I've never seen a drumstick that small... EVER.
Thanks Oprah for this free meal

See the entire slideshow here:


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Furlough adventures #3 and #4 is scheduled for Friday, September 4th, and Tuesday September 8th (it's a five day weekend). You can post a comment here at Akit's Complaint Department to give suggestions on what I should do or visit next. You can also e-mail me at complaints@NOSPAMakit.org (take-out the "nospam" notation).

All suggestions will be reviewed and a poll will be posted in the next week or two. Two items from the previous poll will return: Cable Car Museum and Rockridge district.

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