San Francisco, 30-Oct

We were ready for a day which was less packed, so we headed out in the morning a few blocks west to the Civic Center area. In the middle of doing a self-guided walking tour of the area, we went to the Asian Art Museum. Early in our walk we went through the UN Plaza, commemorating the drafting of the original United Nations Charter in San Francisco. The Farmers Market sets up in the plaza on Sundays, and it was fun to see all the booths. We wandered around a bit more, glancing at the Library and City Hall, both of which were closed. However, it was about time for the Asian Art Museum to open, so we made our way there.

San Francisco City Hall

The first thing we went to was new exhibit about the Maharaja, exploring the life and times of India's kings. We had downloaded the podcast of the audio tour the night before, so we were set to go through the galleries. The collection is very impressive, and was set up with the help of London's Victoria and Albert Museum (which we thoroughly enjoyed last year).

We got most of the way through our audio tour, but we interrupted it to catch the guided tour of museum highlights. We saw several Buddhas, lots of jade, and even a vessel shaped like a rhinoceros. Right after that tour was finished, we made our way back to the information desk to wait for the next guided tour about the Maharaja exhibit, thinking that the docent would cover different things than the audio tour. That ended up being partly true, but fortunately the overlap wasn't too great.

By this time we were more than ready to eat, so we tried out the museum's café, which was pretty good. It was, however, strange to see mochi packets on display. I turned around and saw a box of pocky sticks for sale. Right, an Asian Art museum.

Asian Art Museum

Having our blood sugar levels again close to normal, we finished up our Maharaja audio tour, then went upstairs to take a look at the Japanese wing. By the time we finished that, we were pretty worn out, so it was time to head back outside. We finished up our Civic Center walk, finishing up at Davies Hall. We were ready to sit down again, so it was off to the San Francisco Pubic Library to grab some coffee, so we could have enough energy to make it back to the room, being more than ready to call it a day.