San Francisco ft. Atlas Obscura, Part I

Atlas Obscura is a "guidebook and friendly tour-guide to the world's most wondrous places." In other words, it is a list of interesting places that one might want to visit. I learned about Atlas Obscura from a Meetup group that organized an event targeting some of these places of attraction. San Francisco was my first destination.

Early in the morning around 7AM, I left Fresno to head to the Lawrence Caltrain Station about 2.5 hrs away. The group was meeting at 9.45AM. I initially parked near Cosco and walked to the train station (less than 0.1 miles away), but then decided to park on the street nearby because of the organizer's advice. Lot's of street parking on the weekend. I was also considering just driving to San Francisco, but decided to experience Caltrain.

An hour and a half later, we arrived to San Francisco's 22nd Street Station. The first destination was The Tiled Staircase aka The 16th Avenue Tiled Steps Project. The staircase itself was interesting, but the views it offered were truly incredible.

The most diverse group of people :)

This woman was really trying to get out of my way... No luck...

We then stopped at Crepevine Restaurant for a quick brunch. I could not resist having a hot apple cider and smoked salmon with spinach crepes called "San Francisco". I must say that hot cider was amazing and crepes were ok just because of the amount of oil that spinach was cooked in. Overall, a 3.5 star experience.

Our next destination was San Francisco Botanical Gardens. For $8 entrance fee you get access to hundreds of different species represented in one area. I have to say this was not my favorite botanical garden, Chicago was much more spectacular, but still I saw cool plants.

Oh, and I am getting pretty good at photographing some things, just saying ;)

The next stop was the Conservatory of Flowers, a pretty interesting, but a bit small place that outside looked grand.

Inside it had a few rooms...

There was a whole section of the room filled with carnivorous plants. I feel bad for any insects that decide to stop by there...

and a pretty pond...

Finally, there was a butterfly room, probably the most interesting part of the conservatory.

We went to a few other smaller sites, such as the Shakespeare Garden (filled with prom teenagers), Lily Pond, and Mescaline Grove, but I was not really impressed.