Exploring Balboa Park - Part One

Guys, if you every come to California then forget Los Angeles because San Diego is definitely the place to be.
After the grand welcoming I gave to San Diego yesterday, it was necessary to have a more relaxing day so today Jon-Paul, Tim and I spent the day at a place called Balboa Park. I've never heard of it (which apparently I should have), but whatever, it was awesome nonetheless. I shall let the pictures tell the story:

Our hostel in San Deigo's 'Gaslamp District'. Great place.

Look how nice San Diego is

A dog park. Made me miss home greatly.

Downtown San Diego in the distance. Amazing views!

And now I would like to present Balboa Park. It is basically this huge park complex thing with museums, gardens, restaurants, performers, sight seeing events, tours and much more. It has a deep history in San Diego and is no doubt a must see if you ever find yourself here some day.

My favourite aspects of the park was definitely the gardens and the huge variety of museums, there were 15 museums spread out each offering a completely different topic like science, history, art and so on. I opted for the Anthropology museum (sweet!), the Air and Space Flight museum, the Space and Science museum, and of course the Museum of Natural History. I was excited to say the least =)

This post will actually be in two parts because there was so much to see that Tim and I had to take in Balboa Park over two full days.

There were gardens like these spread out all over

Some of the architecture was incredible

The Naturual History museum

The Greenhouse

The Anthropology museum had an exhibition about the Maya people... awesome!

AND an exhibition about Ancient Egypt, two of my favourite topics in the one place!

I read signs like these for hours

I apologize as it is only now I have realized that I didn't really take many pictures whilst inside the museums. I think this is because I got so caught up in soaking it all in that I simply forgot. And, like, I know how much everyone wants to see more pictures of obelisk's and mummies!

Alas it was getting late, we had already been here for hours so it was time to walk home.

San Diego at dusk is simply brilliant.

Planes fly a little low here it appears!

The Anthropology museum I would easily say was the highlight of my day, it went into amazing detail starting from the beginning of civilizations (with exhibitions about the Maya and Egyptian era's which were simply brilliant), all the way up to what we have achieved in the last 100 years, and what we could possibly expect in the next decades and millenniums (with discussion about nanotechnology and AI, two of my favourite topics also). But even just walking to and from each museum on its own was amazing in itself with the scenery, gardens and architecture being really impressive.

My next post will have more pictures of Balboa Park with so much more to do and see, it really was such a grand place that it required 2 full days of exploration.

Oh! And Travel Buddy, despite being with me for the day, forgot to make an appearance... although that's his fault not mine I'd argue.

Part two can be found here.