In an attempt to avoid history repeating itself, Dana and I left for the California Academy of Sciences monthly free day at 7am this morning. Wow, the world looks different then. After an hour's drive, most of it spent queueing to cross the Bay Bridge, we found ourselves about 30th in line with an hour-and-a-half to go before opening.
We waited. The sky grew lighter, Cal Academy employees passed by cruelly holding cups of fresh coffee, and the line grew. And grew. At 9am the tour buses arrived. The line was so long at this point that stewards had started moving people around so it would snake more efficiently, and the end disappeared into the trees and from our view.
Then the doors opened.
I struggled to keep up with the sprinting Dana, who pulled me past the shark tanks and Galapagos exhibits until we were in our second queue of the day (third, if you count the bridge) waiting to grab prized planetarium tickets. Five minutes later we had them clutched in our sweaty palms, and ran to the next queue to get into the rainforest. Some time around 10am we actually got to look at an exhibit!
The Academy building is impressive, dominated by two huge spheres housing the aforementioned planetarium and rainforest. Underneath is an aquarium, and a "living roof" sits on top. Various side galleries explain global warming and evolution, along with the requisite stuffed animals, and there are some amusing penguins on display too.
It's actually quite an impressive place, but the thing drowns under the volume of visitors. Fighting your way through a crowd to see a tank with some brightly coloured fish in quickly becomes tiring, and Dana and I managed two hours in a musuem we'd queued for one-and-a-half to get into. Is that irony? When we left, the line to get in was as long as it had been at 9.30am and no one in that seemed to see the funny side...
Morning. Early.
Dana near the front of the queue...
...and everyone else behind.
Nearly time!
And we're in! Almost - this is a picture from the queue.
A permanent resident.
Looking down from the rainforest canopy.
Looking up at the nice architecture.
"Excuse me...sorry...coming through..."
The living roof could do with some weeding.
A diver taking questions in the tank.
Hello.
