April 2011 San Francisco vacation - Part 7 (Golden Gate Park...and lots of ducks)

Previous San Francisco vacation posts

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6 

Day 2: Monday, April 11, 2011 (continued)

After we exited the Japanese Tea Gardens, we headed back out to explore the rest of Golden Gate Park.  I had a whole to-do list of things to see there, and was really looking forward to this part of my trip.  I had been Facebooking throughout my journey and a friend suggested I check out the little lake area that was nearby...so that was the direction we headed.  

As we walked for quite awhile, I realized that I hadn't seen any shuttle buses go by the entire time we'd been there...that was what I was relying on to get me around the park.  I had read online that it was $2 for an all-day pass and it takes you to all the major attractions in the park.  I started to worry so I looked the info up on my phone again and saw that the shuttle only ran on weekends!  I was sooooooo bummed.  The park was way too huge to walk it, especially for a 5 year old.  Looks like I was just out of luck and gonna have to save the majority of the park for another trip. :(

We  did find the little lake at least and explored that area.  We kinda did the area in fast forward though cause all we had for breakfast was a banana at that point and it was getting on lunch time already....tummies were starting to grumble and my body doesn't cope well when it's hungry...so I knew our time was limited unfortunately.

The lake was really neat though - you could walk around the lake (which was pretty big) and in a couple of spots there were bridges that you could cross to walk on the little island.  There was also a paddle boat rental place and so you could see all the people paddling around the lake.

We even got to see little critters like this one :)

Then when you get on the island you can follow these trails that go to the top of the hill (a great exercise trail!  If I lived here this would be a great place to go get a good workout!).  When you get to the top, you're rewarded with a gorgeous view.  You can even see the Golden Gate Bridge off in the distance to the right!

And here's some writing that was on the little Chinese building that you could see across the lake in the other picture towards the top of this post.  Anyone know what it says??

That was about all I could handle...needed food at that point.  So we headed back towards the main road, stopped at a playground for a couple of minutes, then caught a bus towards Fisherman's Wharf.  More from there in my next post! :)