San Francisco (pt 1)

We sat in traffic for almost two hours from Palo Alto to San Francisco (which is only 30 miles) but the Fairmont Hotel seems great - good service, excellent location. I called from the room down to Nelson, the hotel concierge, who is the man here ! He managed to book the city's best tour guide for tomorrow as well as a table at Zuni Cafe (which is usually booked up a month in advance) for lunch. When I finally met Nelson I found out that he is actually Chinese - which threw me a little. Maybe his parents had something against the French ??!!

The De Young Museum currently has the "King Tut" exhibition which includes exhibits from the Tutankhamun tomb amongst others from the Valley of the Kings. Obviously, it was uncovered by Howard Carter in 1922 and brought home to me once again how big an influence the Brits have had throughout history...

We then crossed the road to visit the "California Academy of Sciences" which houses a small aquarium, a planetarium (for which you need special tickets which are usually sold out), and a pretty pathetic "rain forest" which was basically a bunch of house plants and a sophisticated sprinkler system. Calling this a rain forest was a bit like me taking Elizabeth's 20 year old Austin Mini and my 10 year old Ford Capri and calling it a "classic car collection".

However, one highlight was the penguin feeding in the "Evolution" hall...

Having seen the way it works, I suggested to Elizabeth that when it comes to feeding the boys each night, she might like to try slipping into a bikini, and serve their food out of a bucket straight into the swimming pool - it'll certainly save on the washing up !

In the same hall, the museum are also showing a whole series of stuffed wildlife such as giraffes, lions, wildebeast etc. As you can probably tell, we weren't too impressed with the whole experience...maybe it's just that we been spoilt for so long with the Science and Natural History museums in London - hopefully, our tour tomorrow will be better !!

In case you can't tell, the above picture shows one creature who lives with other wild animals and beats his chest with his fists when he's hungry or tired. The other creature is a gorilla.