The first two times I’ve visited San Francisco, I’ve wanted to check out the California Academy of Sciences but just hadn’t had the time. The Golden Gate Park is just lovely on its own, especially that it has its own Japanese Tea Garden which is so serene and beautiful, and I must mention that the Golden Gate Park is actually bigger in size than Central Park in New York City.

I had the great pleasure to finally visit this museum on my third visit to San Francisco and I was glad I did! There are just so many cool things to see here which makes your money worth while.

California Academy of Sciences Photos

One of the coolest things about this place is the planetarium - where we were taken into a journey through space from billions of years ago to our present day. It felt so real!! You really did feel like you were a star in space with the rounded screen. My mind was spinning.

My favourite things to see is animals. They’re just so adorable!

TURTLE EATING A LEAF = CUTE!

PENGUINS = MAJORLY CUTE!

A unique feature of this museum is the indoor rainforest!

The higher you go inside this dome, the more humid it was and the more interesting the animals got.

Plus I saw more butterflies!

If that’s not enough animals for you – you can go all the way downstairs to the aquarium!

White Aligator :)

If that’s not unique enough – you can go all the way to the top to see the living green roof on top! How environmental conscious!

You must must must see this museum! I really enjoyed it and I’m sure you will too :)

California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Drive
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA 94118
Mon-Fri 9:30-5pm, Sun 11-5pm
http://www.calacademy.org/

About the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)

The Royal Ontario Museum is the largest museum in Canada for world culture and natural history. It’s situated on Bloor Street, just north of Queen’s Park. It contains more than six million items, fourty galleries, and notable collections of dinosaurs, Near Eastern and African art, East Asian art, European history, and Canadian history.

The ROM began in 1912 and has since then experienced several expansions and updates. The latest update was the Crystal house, which opened in 2007 and houses the new main entrance to the museum, a gift shop, a restaurant, a cafeteria, seven additional galleries and Canada’s largest temporary exhibition hall in the lower level. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind and the crystalline-form is 25 percent glass and 75 percent aluminium and sits on top of a steel frame. It was an addition to the current heritage building, but does not touch the sides and provides a new fresh look for the museum (as seen in the photo above).

Here are some ancient (and undoubtedly beautiful) buddhas and East Asian art.

I really loved this part of the museum – all the cool rocks and stones!

But if I had to choose a particular part of the museum which I loved the most – it would definitely be the dinosaur collection!

This piece of art we came across was the funniest! Hahaha

The Ancient Egypt collection was probably the coolest.

Ancient Europe

If you want to check out the ROM – the best time to go is on Friday evenings (after 4:30pm) when it’s half price (sponsored by Sun Life Financial)!

The museum is a memorable visit and of great value even on full price.

Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) Location & Directions

Bloor St W & Avenue Rd, Toronto, Ontario

The best way to get here is via TTC, just get off at Museum station on the University line and it’ll take you RIGHT to that intersection! You won’t miss it :)

About the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge

Whenever I go to San Francisco I can’t help but marvel over the beauty of the Golden Gate Bridge. Being declared as one of the modern Wonders of the World and also one of the most beautiful and photographed bridge in the world, it is the most international recognised symbol of not only San Francisco but the United States.

When the bridge was built in 1937, it was the longest suspension bridge and it was to connect the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County and spans over the opening of the San Francisco Bay in the Pacific Ocean.

The San Francisco bridge is pretty busy in terms of car traffic, but it is also busy with pedestrians – not only tourists, but frequent joggers and cyclists.

You can get a magnificent view of the whole city of San Francisco from the the bridge.

Peeking down below, it’s also nice to watch the waves hit the coast.

Because of the waves – there are also a lot of surfers!

And yachts!

San Francisco gate is a lovely area where I’m sure gets frequented by thousands of tourists a day.

From here you can peek through the binoculars.

From this side of the coast, you can get a good view of Alcatraz as well.

At the pier, there are many fishermen.

About Fort Point National Historic Site

At the bottom of the Golden Gate bridge, you can visit the Fort Point National Historic Site which is open for free 3 days a week (Friday through to Sunday 10am to 5pm) which became a National Historic Site on October 16th, 1970.

The fort was constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1853 and 1861 to prevent entrance of any hostiles into San Francisco Bay and was designed to mount 126 massive cannon. The fort was occupied throughout the Civil War, but when more faster and more powerful rifled cannons were invented, brick forts such as Fort Point became obsolete.

The troops were withdrawn in 1889, and the last cannon was removed about 1900. The fort was then used for storage and training purposes for many years. The fort was then used as a base of operations for the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge between 1933 and 1937.

San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge & Fort Point National Historic Site Location

View larger map

The Museum of Inuit Art is located within the historic Queens Quay Terminal at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. This museum is dedicated to the art and culture of Canada’s indigenous people (known as Inuit) and features sculptures carved from stone, antler, ivory and bone to ceramics, prints and wall hangings.

It was officially launched in June 2007 and aims to showcase the artistic history of Canada’s Inuit by showcasing their cultural and thematic foundations of their art and highlighting the regional diversity of their artistic expression.

I very much enjoyed visiting this museum. The sculptures, paintings and ceramics were undeniably beautiful. There were a range of miniature to large sculptures and I wondered how they sculpted these so long ago and so precisely. I very much enjoyed the sculptures of themselves, and their way of life. It was interesting to see their perspective of life and what mattered to them, and how they viewed themselves.

The museum also showcases videos where you can sit and watch to learn more about the Inuit history and culture which was very interesting as well. We spent about 2 hours at this museum, marvelling at each and every piece. I highly recommend viewing this museum!

See more pictures at my
Museum of Modern Art Flickr set.

Tasmania is full of beautiful scenery. Clear skies, blue water and lush green mountains. Above and below are snaps we took on our way to Port Arthur! Nature is lovely in Australia, and especially in Tassie!

So what’s so special about Port Arthur? I’m sure everybody around the world knows that Australia’s first settlers were British and Irish convicts. But if you didn’t know already, Port Arthur was actually Australia was first colonised. This is where all the convicts stayed and worked and it became Australia’s largest penal station.

Port Arthur is now Australia’s most significant heritage sites and have thus has become one of Australia’s top tourist attractions. As a large open-air museum, you can walk around the large land and feel history come to life. Most buildings are still in tact, but some have unfortunately been destroyed in two large bushfires in the 1990s.

Above is a photo of me standing at what would’ve been the convicts first view of Australia. Lucky, I say! Look at how pretty the mountains are in the background. But just in front of the mountains, are the various buildings such as church, penitentiary, guard tower, policeman’s residence, commandment’s office, etc.

Here’s my brother and I inside one of the buildings.. Hahahaha.

Once you purchase a ticket to enter the Port Arthur Historic Site, you receive a complimentary ticket to sit on the ferry which takes you around to see the other islands. This is the way to get to the POint Puer Boys’ Prison, where three thousand boys, some as young as nine years old stayed and worked.

Most people jump onto this ferry to visit the Isle of the Dead which is a separate island where thousands of burials were made. I was not game enough to visit there, but I sure loved standing in the sun feeling the cool breeze on my skin while riding the ferry!

This is me loving the sun and water!

Here’s a photo of my mum and dad. Cute!

Believe this is one of the guard towers. If you tried to leave the island, you’d be shot from this tower!

You can also walk through the prison (it’s very eerie!) and see what it’s like to live here. Here is a typical prison cell where they slept and worked.

While the buildings for the convicts were so horrible, this is how beautiful the Roman Catholic Chaplain’s house was. Isn’t it stunning!

This is my favourite room in the house, it’s so pink! Love!!!! <3

Here’s me and my brother in the court room where convicts were sentenced.

Doesn’t this bell look real? Well it isn’t! It’s paper!

This is one of the churches at Port Arthur, where you came to repent your sins. Too bad a lot of the building has been destroyed.

While you may have been treated poorly as a convict at Port Harbour, it was well kept. Check out how beautiful it must’ve been to live here!

In all, I recommend visiting the Port Arthur Hertiage site. It is located at the southern end of the Tasman Peninsula, 90 minutes’ drive south-east of Hobart. We spent a whole day here, there are so many things to see and do and we still didn’t get to see everything. There’s so much to experience and learn here, it was great. Make sure you put on your walking shoes though, this place is huge but well worth the whole day visit!

There are plenty of other things to do at Niagara Falls, all of them really cheesy and tacky. This includes the Movieland Wax Museum.

We’ve all heard about how scarily close the Madame Tussauds Wax Museums get to the real deal and so I had sort of the same expectations when I went to the Movieland Wax Museum especially after seeing the freakishly identical wax figure of Heath Ledger (as shown above). It looks so incredibly real!

To tell you the truth, I was pretty disappointed. A lot of the wax figures looked far from the individual. But having said that, there were a few that stood out and really surprised me how good they looked. Examples below!

It doesn’t take long to walk through the museum as well, it’s very small with not a lot of wax figures to see. At the very end, you can have a wax replica of your hand made at the Fun Factory Gift Shop.

Entry

Adults: $9.99 CDN plus tax
Children: $5.99 CDN plus tax
Kids under 3: Free

Movieland Wax Museum Review
Cleanliness
Staff
Location
Value

Overall
Not really worth the time, or money. But it's something to do if there's nothing better!

More photos:

Movieland Wax Museum Flickr Set
57 Photos