California Trip

The last leg of my trip in California involved friends and family time, often over meals and board games. I visited San Francisco on a beautiful, sunny day and rode the cable car and learned more about it at the Cable Car Museum. Also went to some places in the Sonoma area – it’s famous as the home of Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz. 

San Francisco - view of Alcatraz

Beautiful tulips in full bloom

On the cable car

What’s running the cable cars underground

Harsh penalties for looting after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

Learned about the woman, Freidel Klussmann, who led the efforts to save the cable cars from being scrapped

More of the underground workings

On the cable car

The Bridge

Cute forest friends

Traintown miniature railroad

Aircraft museum

Smallest jet aircraft

Iceskating at Charles Schulz skating rink

Charles Schulz Museum

Various Peanuts memorabilia

On a full-size train in the redwood forest

Day out in Brooklyn

My friend was kind enough to take me around her neighborhood of Brooklyn on my last day in NY. I hope I have that kind of energy a few decades from now. We walked over the Brooklyn Bridge so I could see things from that perspective, then went to the Brooklyn Public Library and Brooklyn Museum. I rushed back to Times Square to see the Moulin Rouge musical – it was amazing and had additional recent pop music mixed in since the film to make it even more fun. It was a sweet final taste of NY!

 

Brooklyn Bridge

Skyline from the Bridge

Interesting acronym here - DUMBO stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass

Boats out

Checked out the brownstone buildings

Dogwalkers are for real

Great architecture and bustling city life

Gorgeous Brooklyn Public Library – so culturally enriched even just at the entrance

Library is trying to go for a more bookstore vibe to attract readers

Library space looked inviting

Brooklyn Museum had mummies and an interesting explanation of how recent feminist scholarship has shown that some women were honored with male names temporarily to trick the gods, something like that, that it wasn’t a typo like previous scholars thought

The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago – a feminist art display from the 1970s – a reimagining of a dinner party with famous women across history (eg Artemisia Gentileschi). Each place setting is customized to a particular woman, and they get more elaborate the closer they get to modern times.

Artemisia Gentileschi place setting

Mary Wollstonecraft place setting

Emily Dickinson place setting

Another beautiful Tiffany stained glass

Classic George

Love that Romanticism

Classic Abe

Kehinde Wiley’s modern take on Napoleon (explanation follows)

Brooklyn Museum

More brownstone buildings

Moulin Rouge musical – amazing and had additional recent pop music mixed in since the film

Downtown was happenin’ at night

 

American Natural History Museum and MJ the Musical

The American Museum of Natural History was massive - I did as much as I could in a day, including a couple science shows. I was particularly impressed by their dinosaur collections. Who doesn't like learning new dinosaur facts?! There was a beautiful but sad exhibit on extinct and endangered insects - photographs blown up to wall size that took around a month each to create. And a special sharks exhibit with more shark facts to learn. The day rounded off with a Broadway show - MJ (Michael Jackson) the Musical - with amazing dancing, singing, and music. The amount of energy coming off the stage was palpable.

Snow leftovers from yesterday

Experienced NYers have snow booties for their dogs!

Special "Sharks" exhibit was interesting

More shark facts to learn!

Mineral room

Mineral room

Mineral room

Patagotitan mayorum – a dinosaur from the titanosaurus group – needed a long room to hold it

Nice exhibit by photographer Levon Biss called Extinct & Endangered – it took around 4 weeks for each of these intricate photographs of insects

Xerces Blue Butterfly - from Extinct & Endangered

Mount Hermon June Beetle - from Extinct & Endangered

Butterflies from Extinct & Endangered

For those of us who insist on Brontosaurus

Track examples

Dinosaur speed

Dinosaur with head and neck curved back – apparently this happened post-death when neck muscles contracted

T-Rex

Some familiar NZ Māori exhibits

And a Broadway show to end the night - MJ (Michael Jackson) the Musical. Amazing dancing, singing, and music.