Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Annual Father Daughter Week! Day Three

Arriving at the De Young

After spelunking through mines and caverns yesterday in the Gold Country, it’s back to San Francisco to visit the De Young and the Japanese Tea Gardens.  Today the King Tutankhamun exhibit is the main attraction.  Going mid-week turns out to be great. We didn’t have very many people at the exhibit to wade through just to see the pieces.  Anna wasn’t all that into the King Tut display, but when we passed through the gift shop she liked all the King Tut related stuff.  I ended up buying her a bracelet, writing pad, pencil, & bamboo book mark with a turtle carved out, and a gem stone turtle for mom.  Once we made it out of the souvenir shop, we ran into Adam, who’s working at the De Young.  Actually I was too focused on Anna and deciding what to see next when Adam ran up and caught our attention.  It was a short conversation, I’m sure he couldn’t break away from work too long just to shoot the breeze but I’m glad we ran into him.  After talking to Adam we caught lunch at the nice restaurant at the De Young.

After lunch we browsed the rest of the displays.  The African exhibit up stairs was more interesting to Anna than King Tut was.  Once we had seen all the art, we headed outside.  I’d planned on going straight to the Japanese Tea Garden, but instead we walked around for a few minutes and ended up at this neat pond next to the museum.

turtles with lily pads and flowers

Turtles and lily pads next to the De Young

Anna met a little girl and they played around this pond and park area for awhile.  I talked with the girls parents while shooting some photos. Turned out they were from Korea and the dad is a visiting professor for a year.  Their daughter didn’t speak any English, and the mother only spoke some.  However, we still managed to carry a conversation, and enjoyed watching our daughters play together.  I think Anna enjoyed that play time more than the museum or the Tea Gardens.

After a while we headed over to the Tea Gardens and I shot a few photos of Anna and the gardens.

anna at the tea gardens pagoda at the tea garden

After checking out the Tea Gardens, we headed out of town.  We were going to stop buy Anna’s Aunt’s house in Vallejo on the way home and visit for a few minutes.  Her aunt Katherine loves art and museums and Anna, so I though she would like talking to Anna about what she saw at the De Young and the Academy of Sciences.  The only problem I had was getting out of town.  My GPS was having a difficult time locating the satellites, so I just drove by feel until it finally synced with the satellites.  I was close!  Only a couple blocks from the freeway on-ramp.

Day four we stayed in town while waiting half the day for a tire place to put two new tires on my car.  We did manage to walk to Starbucks to meet mom for lunch while my car sat waiting its’ turn.  We were so hot by mid after noon when my car was finally done, we went straight home and jumped in the pool.

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