Day 29 - Aquarium of the Bay & Golden Gate Bridge

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After yesterday's exhaustive walk around Alcatraz, we decided that today ought to be a fairly relaxed one. Waking up at about 9:30am, we made no real attempt to rush ourselves to get ready, but ended up being washed, dressed and presentable by about 11:00am. During this time we also updated the blog for yesterday and loaded up Skype ready to talk to our families as we had previously arranged at about 11:30am - 12:30pm.

Once we'd finished catching up - and since it was dinner time by this point - we grabbed our stuff and headed out. We knew that today we would be visiting the Aquarium of the Bay, but also decided that since it seemed to be another scorching hot day, we should also take the time to visit the Golden Gate Bridge. Firstly, however, was the small matter of food. We've pretty much sampled all of the individual eateries around our local area so opted to take the half a mile walk to KFC. Craig ordered the 'Large Popcorn Chicken Combo' again, and Emma ordered a single box of 'Large Popcorn Chicken. Since Craig's combo came with a re-fillable drink and some huge potato wedges, we split everything between us (saving a little bit of money overall).

One we'd eaten, rather than walk all the way back to Market Street on a full stomach, we caught the number 5 bus from a couple of blocks down from KFC that would take us straight there. Once on Market Street, we waited at the stop for the trusty 'F' line that would take us to Pier 39. Whilst waiting we were entertained by a black man shouting up to a woman's apartment (literally just calling her name) for about 5 minutes straight at the top of his lungs, and also a man walk past with a 4ft-5ft lizard on his back! Anyway, the street car soon arrived and we were on our way.

About 15 minutes later we arrived at Pier 39 and walked towards the aquarium (literally just in front of the stop we got off at) and asked the lady at the information counter if we needed to exchange our CityPass vouchers for tickets or if we could just go straight in. She told us we could head on into the aquarium, so we got on the escalator that took us to the entrance. We showed our passes to the ticket desk, who then pointed us in the direction of an elevator that would bring us to the first section of the aquarium.

In the first room there was a medium sized tank in front of us with some weird/ugly looking fish in, but in the corner we spotted a more colourful looking tank so walked in that direction. This was a tropical tank (the only one in the aquarium), that was home to the nicer looking fish - including some more well-known types such as clown fish (Nemo) and blue tang fish (Dory). We took a few photos before taking an elevator down to the next section.

This area was like your typical 'underwater' section, popular in Sea Life Centre's, where you could walk through a tunnel built into the tank that let everything swim in panorama around you. We walked through the first bit of tunnel, seeing various things such as star fish, sardines, lazy fish that just lie down and don't swim often and a couple of leopard sharks. Once again, we took a few pictures when we could, but most of the buggers move so quick it's difficult!

We then followed on through to the next section of tunnel, it had quite a few of the same species as before, but the first thing we noticed were a pair of gigantic sharks. We're not entirely sure what type of shark they were, but they looked like a bull-dozer heading towards you! We rested against the rails in this area for a while, in awe of the huge some of them were, when all of a sudden a massive ray popped up from nowhere behind Craig (Craig says: scared the bloody life out of me!), Emma - camera in hand - tried to take a quick picture and sort of got a decent one (though Craig's initial shock had subsided by that point). We looked around for a bit longer, noticing more types of rays, sharks and others, before taking the winding tunnel back towards the elevator.

Craig was a bit confused at this point, thinking that the entire aquarium consisted of an elevator down, a room with 2 tanks, and a tunnel. However, it turns out that the elevator does not take you back to the entrance, instead, it takes you 1 floor up to the 'Touch Pools' section.

When you first walk out onto the floor, there is a tank with some toads inside. What we noticed (and found hilarious, so took pictures), was that the 3 toads in the tank appeared to be stacked up on top of eachother - see pictures!

We carried on walking, and immediately to your left, there is a small pool filled with one or two types of rays, two leopard sharks and another little grey shark; all of which you can touch. Amazed that you are actually allowed to touch living sharks, we walked over. Craig was initially hesitant, so Emma dipped her fingers in first. Unfortunately the shark swam to the other side, but she did get a feel of one of the rays - which she described as 'slimy'. We noticed that there was a shark lying still on the other side of the pool, so walked around. There were a couple of children slightly in the way, so Emma couldn't quite reach at first. Instead, Craig plucked up the courage and stuck his arm into the water (the shark was quite deep in the pool). It turns out that although sharks look very slick and stream-lined, they're actually incredibly rough!

Once the kids had moved Emma had a touch aswell, before more rays came around, so of course we gave them a quick stroke too. During the encounter at this touch pool, Craig appeared to make a 'connection' with a ray, who raised half up out of the water and began flapping it's wings so that a lot of water splashed in his direction - thankfully he didn't get soaked!

After our time at the touch pool, we looked around this level of the aquarium a little more. It appeared that not only did they have touch pools, they also had some other critters on display too. We walked around the different display cases, seeing things like tortoises, taranchulas and tree frogs - apparently climbing on everything but the tree! Craig was taking a few pictures of the animals when Emma came back from around a corner and told him that he would not like what was next. Curious, he walked back with her around the corner, only to find a massive bee hive filled with thousands of live bees! (Craig says: OMG!)

Craig pretty much ran away at this point, and stumbled upon more animals on the second touch pool. This was was a lot more shallow, and was home mainly to different types of star fish - as well as some weird, stringy, jelly-like thing that almost looked like coral (but was definitely some type of fish). We touched them all to see what they felt like (star fish are actually quite hard, and the jelly thing stuck to your fingers - gross!), before taking more photos and heading forward to the rest of the display animals display. These display cases had things such as crabs, hedgehogs and turtles.

At this point, we had pretty much done everything in the aquarium so went back to the exit that would take us back onto the pier. We walked around some of the shops on Pier 39 - including a magnet shop with very realistic-looking items of food such as donuts, icecream and hotdogs - see pictures! We then ventured back to where we had previously watched the sea lions, and sure enough, there they were again - although this time they appeared to be a lot more vocal, they woudn't stop 'barking'! After relaxing in the sun whilst watching the sea lions frolick - and as it was well past 4:00pm - we decided it was time to head towards the Golden Gate Bridge.

We pulled out our trusty map and worked out the best route from where we were via public transport (it's quite a long walk). It turns out we could catch a couple of connecting buses and would end up exactly where we wanted to be, so we walked to the first stop which was a few blocks down the road. We caught the number 8 bus, followed by the number 30 bus that would take us half way, and got off where we knew the number 28 bus picked up from. We waited a little while for the 28 to arrive, before hopping on, flashing our passes and sitting down. About two thirds of the way there, the bus driver informed us that this was his last stop (even though the route carries on), so we had to get off and wait for another 28 that would take us the rest of the way. We didn't have to wait long, and before we knew it, were back on our way.

Eventually we reached the stop for the Golden Gate Bridge at about 5:00pm, and got off to have a look around. We won't bore you too much with the details - the pictures speak for themselves! - but it was really good. We took a lot of photos, walked along the bridge, watched the crazy surfers down below (perilously close to the rocks), and even spotted a few more sea lions in the sea under the bridge! All in all it was a great experience, the bridge really is a work of wonder! We also took a look at a cut-off, display section of one of the wires. It's really informative seeing the cross section like that; each supporting wire has thousands and thousands of smaller wires inside, and the whole thing weighs thousands of tons in total.

After spending an hour or two there, we hopped back on the number 28 bus which would once again take us about halfway to where we needed to be. We got off, and this time caught the 'N' line back to Market Street by our hostel. Due to it being so late, we were both hungry and decided that we would pop to Walgreens to pick up some food that we could cook back at the hostel. We walked around the shop for a while, before settling on a couple of 'healthy-option' microwave meals - a lasagne and a macaroni-beef. We also fancied something a bit sweet for dessert, so picked up pack of twinkies and a tin of pineapple chunks. We paid for our food and walked the short distance back to the hostel.

We went into the kitchen and got everything prepare -, it turns out there's only one microwave in the kitchen, but there's one in the lounge area too. We waited for the first microwave to become available - putting our pineapple in the fridge to chill while we waited - and when it was, Emma put the lasagne in the microwave in the kitchen, whilst Craig took the macaroni-beef to the one in the lounge. In the time they were cooking, Craig ate his half of the pack of two twinkies - Emma had the patience to wait!

When everything was ready, we plated up half of each meal onto each of our plates - with an obligatory blob of ketchup of course! They were actually very delicious, and we both agree, money well spent - healthier than junk food too! Craig then grabbed the tin of pineapple from the fridge and searched around for a tin-opener in the drawers, unsuccessful, we looked around the rest of the kitchen until we found what appeared to be an 'automated' one. Tentatively, Craig wedged the can under the contraption and pressed the button, sending the can into a spinning motion. As if by magic, the top came off and allowed us a teasing peak at the contents of the can.

We tipped it into a bowl and sat back at our table to eat it, whilst Mythbusters played on the T.V. Emma got full after a short while, and rather than throw the rest of the pineapple away, Craig managed to eat what must have been the equivalent of half of a full pineapple, followed by all of the juice from the can. Once finished, we walked back to reception to get the elevator to our room. Whilst we were there - and since we needed to book it sooner rather than later - we asked the man at reception if we could pay for the private shuttle bus that would take us from our hostel to the airport on Friday. We paid the deposit and hopped into the elevator back to our room. By this point it was about 7:00-8:00pm so we did the usual checks on the netbook, read some of our books and generally just relaxed the rest of the night!

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