Travels in a Tin Can

just as we pulled up outside the museum, and it did not stop all day.
The Californian Academy of Science is like a one stop shop for your
cultural needs. When we went inside, bought our tickets and were given a
map, we were immediately overwhelmed by how much there was to see. This
is something that commonly afflicts me (probably because I work in
museums) when I go into large museums or other attractions. What makes
this feeling worse is the provision of various events because as well as
planning the order in which to 'do' the exhibitions you have to timetable your
plans. Fortunately this particular museum did not have many events on. It did
however have volunteers on hand to help you schedule your visit, and we
quickly turned to this resource. The elderly couple manning the information
desk told us what was interesting - everything - and in return we had to tell
them about the UK and hear their travel tales. Fascinating. Thus informed that
we should see it all we made a start - with the restaurant.
We then spent a long afternoon looking at exhibitions ranging from a
room of skulls (complete with live exhibit of insects that clean flesh off bones)
through a gallery showing the history of life, to a display of Larson cartoons.
We also took in a very good planetarium show (as noteworthy for its
comfortable seats as for its content); an earthquake exhibition complete with
moving floor and 'build your own houses out of Duplo then knock them down'
interactive; and a variety of aquariums. The latter were very diverse - with a
penguin exhibit (where keepers attempted to do a public feeding session and
the penguins went on hunger strike); reptiles; and a touch tank. We only left
when we did because the museum was closing, we even ran out of time to do
the obligatory gift shops - luckily (!) we had had the foresight to visit these