Sunday walk at Balboa Park, San Diego, CA

Just a few pictures from our Sunday walk at Balboa Park in San Diego. It's a really gorgeous place. Even though i have been here many times, every time i am in San Diego i want to visit this park again. The architecture in the park is very beautiful, so just walking around the park is a pleasant experience. But there are more things to see: many different museums, lots of people performing on the street, galleries, art shows, gardens etc. And some of that i am going to share with you in this post.   

2.

 200-foot California Tower, it was built in 1915. In its building you can find the San Diego Museum of Man. 

3.

At Balboa Park's information booth you can find not only the map of the park and get cash from ATM, but even connect to free wi-fi. There are several information booths around the park. 

4.

If you like you can get your face painted by this lady.  

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

The day i was at the park, there was a bird show on the main street by bird rescue. I took pictures of the most colorful ones.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

This is the most pictured spot at the park, the Botanic Building with Lily Pound, built in 1915. The historic building is one of the largest lath structures in the world and it has 2100 permanent plants.

15.

16.

17.

This time i visited San Diego Model Railroad museum. This is the world's largest operating model railroad museum. 28,000 square feet of four enormous scale and model layouts, built by separate clubs, which depict railroads of the Southwest. Here are some pictures of it:

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

I had a chance to see the museum behind the scene. The museum has one of the rooms that is still under construction and i could see how they make landscape models. On this picture you can see that half of the landscape is not finished yet. 

26.

To make a very similar copy of real landscape they use satellite pictures of real land.    

27.

Then cut with jigsaw from plywood and form landscape, roads, bridges.  Then finish it with glue, paint and decorations to make it more real. 

28.

This is how the model designer's office looks like. 

29.

After Railroad museum i visited Reuben H. Fleet Science Center. It has more than 100 hands-on science exhibits for all ages. And when i was there i wanted to try them all. 

One of those interactive exhibits was this one. Two red plates are located on front of each other across the 30 ft. room. Even though there is noise from bunch of people in the huge hall, when you place your head in the yellow circle in the center of the plate, you can communicate with people that are next to another plate across the hall. Even if you whisper-the other person can hear you.

30.

Overall it was a great experience. I don't want to show any more exhibits from there. If you are planning on visiting the park i think you should go to this museum. I am pretty sure you will find lots of interesting things for you.   

I wonder, how much time did he spend on this Jenga?

30.

Before i finish my story i want to show a few pictures of local beer brewery in downtown San Diego where we stopped after  Balboa Park. They have really good  beer.  Try it when you are next time in SD .  We did a beer tasting and bartender was very nice and explained about their beer. It was interesting to know how they calculate alcohol level in the beer.  

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

As always, if you like my posts please share them and leave a comment below:   

Also follow me on Facebook, Google+, Twitter.

Stay Tuned!