San Francisco: Sea Lions!

Way back in December of 2012 I ventured to San Francisco to visit one of my bestest friends, Liz.  If you read my last post, you journeyed with me to Alcatraz.  Today I’ll take you to a few of  the places I went after I took the ferry back to the mainland.

I exited the boat, wandered a bit, and, to my delight, I found these guys:

I don’t know if there’s an acceptable appropriate amount of time that one is allowed to watch sea lions before it becomes “weird”…but I watched them long enough that I’m pretty sure it was.  Weird that is.  They’re just so funny and floppy, and they sleep together so closely that when one wakes up and wants to move it has to step on all the others.  And they would play, and fight, and fall off the barges.  I know, I know.  I’m strange and obsessed.  But it was worth it.

I had, rather accidentally, stumbled upon Pier 39 which is apparently somewhat famous for attracting huge numbers of sea lions.  Who knew?  I don’t know how many were there when I found it, but, from what I’ve new read about them, I only saw a small number of them.  Their numbers go up to the hundreds (although an NBC article that I found thanks to Wikipedia claims that in 2009 there were at one point 1,500 of them. ).  I highly recommend checking out the Pier 39 website which has a live webcam of them(A little addictive.  I’ve been watching the sea lions when I’m bored.)  It isn’t as good as seeing them live, but you still get all the goofiness.  The camera does time out occasionally(you have to click to refresh it), but you can control the camera angle down at the bottom right hand corner(just be patient if it tells you to wait, #3 and #4 are normally the best angles).  For some reason the camera has this weird habit of angling towards Alcatraz and the SS Jeremiah O’Brian…neither spot has sea lions…neither moves…not sure why the camera points there, but play with it.  It’s movable.  Promise.

Eventually, I convinced myself to leave the pier.  And I found something weird…

Have you ever heard of the Musee Mechanique?  It’s essentially this museum filled with antique arcade games, fortune tellers, music machines, etc.  It was odd when I found it, and it wasn’t until last week when I re-watched the first “Princess Diaries” movie for the zillionth time that I made any connection to it.  You know that scene where Mia gets her grandmother to wrestle that weird arm wrestling machine?  That takes place in the Musee.  I was exhausted at that point, and didn’t take any photos…plus some of the machines are kind of creepy(well…a lot of the machines are kind of creepy) and I don’t know that I’d want photos.  They do have a website, but before you go to it, do me a favor and make sure your computer is muted…I just clicked on it myself and the music and weird laughing is a little unsettling.  So fair warning.  Here’s the link.

RIght outside the Musee Mechanique I found a boat.  A big one.  And also a submarine.

I wish I could have taken some better pictures, but there was a locked gate preventing me from getting to the ship, the SS Jeremiah O’Brien.  I could walk alongside the USS Pampanito, the submarine.  You can pay to tour both of them.  Years and years ago…I might have been in middle or high school…my family though it would be interesting to tour this ship in North Carolina (I think?).  Well…we got lost (the path around the ship wasn’t really marked) and we ended up wandering around for 2/3 hours more than we intended, because seriously, some of those ships are massive. “Cool” sometimes has a time limit.  Now every time I see “tour a historical warship” I have this tendency to stay away.  If you go on the submarine website, though, they have a nice little guided tour feature that you can click through–without getting lost!

You can probably tell from the photos that the sun was slowly inching closer towards the horizon, which meant that Liz got off work and I could figure out how to get back.  I got myself lost(I went a few stops too far), but she found me!  You may have noticed from Alcatraz that I took no photos of myself…I actually only have 2 photos of myself from the entire trip (I get distracted and forget these things).  There’s definitely a theme in the 2 photos.

Yours truly as Rosie the Riveter.

Yours truly as Rosie the Riveter.

In both photos, I have my head in “things”.  Just wait till I show you guys the Japan Town one.  You probably won’t be impressed, but hopefully it’ll encourage someone to remind me to take more photos of people the next time we do something.

Next post should be the end of San Francisco, although I’ve had a busy weekend, so we’ll see.  The Marietta Greek Festival was this past Saturday, and last night Michael and I drove down to Emory to listen to a fantastic concert by the Atlanta Youth Wind Symphony.  My friend Rachel invited us, and I’m so glad we went; they’re quite the impressive sounding bunch. 🙂

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One thought on “San Francisco: Sea Lions!

  1. Pingback: San Francisco: Japanese Tea Garden | Scribbler's Experiment

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