Purr Inside Of Me

On the day of our departure there was a cloudburst. For a whole month there was no such rainy day like on that Saturday.

We moved our flight for one week earlier - that made me happy :)

East or West, home’s best.

Our return flight was calmer, but not without ‘adventures’.

Fortunately this time we got a seats with baby cot, so Maja slept almost whole flight. We had 2 changes in Germany - Munich and Frankfurt. Our luggages left in both of them… There was no enough time to repack our luggages on the airports. But even with this accident - lucky we! Our luggages was very heavy, we’d have a problem to pack it into a trunk in the car, cause it took a lot of space. And if it didn’t fly with us,the messenger had to deliver it to our flat for the next day.

But let’s return to the last part of our USA trip...

Since my last note we slow down the pace of sightseeing and discovering new places. The longer we were, the more lazy we were. There were some days, when we were walking without any purpose and spent our free time in cafes, ice cream points and small nice restaurants.

We were also able to see the most famous ex-jail - Alcatraz and… I think it was the most wasted money through our USA trip. There was only one building opened to the visitors (except to souvenir shop and toilets). The only one what we could see was prison cells, library, canteen and place where prisoners could meet with the friends and families. And that’s all. No stage props, photos, descriptions of the experiences… I missed some element, which could identify myself with those people. 
Visiting Alcatraz without tour guide (only with audiobook) there is no chance to get any curiosities, nothing except historical facts. There was only one weak film narrated by a woman, who lived there with her father (he was the prisoner employee); she was something about 5-7 years when she was there, so she didn’t remember a lot of things...

To sum up - it could be really great attraction for tourists - if it only was organized and to touch up better. Someone apparently ran out of ideas... 
It’s a very rare situation for me to regret visiting a museum. Everytime when I go to a museum I can find at least one thing which is worth to see. And Alcatraz… well - the only things which were really cool, there were a birds, which were talking like this: “blah, blah, blah”. But it’s definitely not worth going there only for that :/ 
(on the photo below you have duck family from Alcatraz)

If I’m talking about museums - we also visited California Academy of Science. Quality of exhibition to tickets price ratio is weak, but it’s worth to see if you travel with kids. There are a lot of attractions for young visitors. There is zone of free flight of birds and butterflies, huge aquarium with a lot of kinds of fish, molluscs and more sea animals. You can also touch real starfish :)

Kids should also like earthquakes platform.

I liked aquarium the most. You can walk under the water. Underwater tunnel is very short, but still it’s impressive :)

Close to this museum is zoological garden, but we didn’t have enough time to go there. Actually, maybe it wasn’t problem with time, we just put it on another and another day and we realized at the end, that we missed this attraction. But I’m not sure if I regret it, because I found some opinions on Google Maps; people wrote, that it’s one of the weakest ZOO in USA.

But if you want to see interesting animal place you should go to Pier 39 (it’s a shopping mall in old pier), there is colony of sea lions. We were able to see a lot of sea lions. If you go to Pier 39 you should eat in one of the restaurants there - they serve delicious fresh fish and seafood.

A bit further up of pier there is small green square around Hyde Street. Hyde Street is the street with the highest slope in whole San Francisco. You should go there and ride the cable car. But if you want to see more popular street I recommend California Street - that's the place where ‘Inception’ was filmed.

Public transport is huge: it includes buses, trams, trolleybuses, underground and cable cars. For first four types you have to use time tickets. You can buy them in a ticket machine or from the driver - but there is big difference between both types. 
Ticket from the ticket machine looks nice and it’s valid for 1,5 hour. And the driver’s ticket is printed on the paper, which is crappy quality - but it’s validate for AT LEAST 1,5 hour. The driver tears off the ticket from the tickets roll. The place where the paper ends has printed hour (that’s the time until you can use it). It didn’t happened to me that this ticket would be validate less than 3 hours. So in the same price you can have twice more time to travel, when you buy driver’s ticket.

To sum up all this USA trip: I was able to see some part of world, which I really wanted to see and I liked it very much. I realized, that I love Poland the most, even if it’s not the easiest place to live in; I really love Warsaw, even if it’s not the cleanest city and people rarely are kind, but there is a lot of parks, green squares and places friendly for kids; and finally I love Ursynów district, where I can go for a walk and ride a bike in huge forest! I missed my family and lovely cats so much. They all got sick during our trip :( But now they’re cured and feel good. They hug, purr and sleep on my pillow with me :)

I’m sharing a few more photos with you:

I brought an army of cats from my USA trip. That’s all my souvenirs - I know, there is a lot of them, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to San Francisco again.

I brought also a lot of items for charity auctions for Koteria. All those items will be available on charity allegro soon. Tomorrow one of the volunteer is taking them from me :) So if you set your eye on something, you have to be up to date with allegro auctions ;)

(from left: eco bag, sticky paw notes, bookmark, pendant to mobile phone, porcelain cat to hide in wallet, purple wallet, tissues, cat stickers-bookmarks, below that: cat toys with catnip, furniture socks, cat cosmetic bag and 2 lucky coins)

Now we’re spending our time on laziness. We defeated jet lag and I’m returning to my DIY projects! I finished another friendship bracelet and I’m going to make another one.

This year we decided to sow some herbs and vegetables on the balcony. We’ll also sow oat, catnip and some ‘grass for cats’ (I’m not sure about this last, but we’ll see).

Purka also wanted to help us with garden work. She got involved in loosening of soil :D

And at the end I’m going to share with you my last purchase - silver cat gentleman bracelet! :)

Good night everyone :)