San Francisco with Kids - Children's Creativity Museum

We've been on holiday in San Francisco, and decided that we would stick to finding places in the city to explore rather than traveling around much this time. We did the whole whirlwind tour experience in 2013 and I even later attempted an A-Z set of posts to capture it all ;).
Never actually completed the alphabet, but it was fun to write! Start reading here if you would like to check it out.

We had a lot of recommendations from friends and family on what to check out, especially with the kids, but sometimes you come across a place serendipitously - this time thanks to looking at a map (a paper one for a change ;)) and finding it marked there. It turned out that it wasn't too far from where we were so decided to give it a try and the kids had an amazing time!

The Children's Creativity Museum has something for kids of all ages, and though I was a bit concerned if D would find it too simple, both of them (12 and 9) found enough to do and had lots of fun. The ones we especially enjoyed were:

First stop: The Animation Studio. We made models out of clay, using the provided metal skeleton as a base. The first coat was with with mixed multicolour blocks (loved that they repurposed the clay for as long as possible), and the outer layer was with the colours to create the characters. Can you guess who made what from the pics?

After making the figures, the kids learnt how to make an animation video using multiple still photos of the characters, moving them a bit every time. We had a whole storyline with the princess and penguin walking along and the zombie coming out to scare them away, but managed a grand 4 second video after what seemed like a ton of clicks :)

Basic figures

And tadaah.. yes the unimaginative penguin is mine ;)
the one on the left is a Spiderman zombie ninja warrior in case you missed that.

The next stop was the Robotics Studio where the kids figured out how to write programs on the provided tablets to take the robots through a variety of tasks.. This one was to find its way out of the maze. There were also ones that drew, threw a ball into a hoop etc. The commands were simple ones, but the challenge was to find the most efficient way to complete the task. More suited for younger kids, but even my 12 year old enjoyed the novelty of it.

The kids and I had the most fun in the Music Studio where you could create your own music video :). They had a green screen background that they could use to add in one from a range of backgrounds and also provided karaoke versions for a selection of popular songs. We actually ended up going back there again later in the day to try and get more videos in ;).
Would have loved to share the videos but I have been following a policy of privacy on the kids' photos and videos, at least until they're online themselves and I have to come up with new rules ;).

There were a couple more spaces.. one based on a winter wonderland theme which had some art based activities.. but these were more catering to the younger kids so we didn't spend much time there.

Ornaments for a paper tree

I was really glad to have found this place by chance, and I hope this post helps someone who visits SF with kids in the future. All details of admission and tickets can be found here. The museum is usually closed on Mondays but was open all days for a couple of weeks thanks to the holiday season.

C is for Change - Tips to handle changing travel plans :)

It was apparently Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said "Change is the only constant" (Yes obviously I had to google that one, the quote is so well known but not who said it :P). And this was the case with our holiday planning as well. From figuring out which hotels to stay in, to the actual dates of stay at a particular place, things kept changing for a couple of weeks until we arrived at the final itinerary. Some of the planning sites/tools that helped:

Expedia: Other than the convenience of booking everything in INR, the important thing to look out for is the "Free Cancellation" mentioned when choosing a type of room at a hotel. This usually costs a bit more, but it turned out to be a saviour when our plans changed, and I was pleasantly surprised that the credit back to the account also happened within 2-3 days of cancellation. This also made me happier with my choice to go with hotels rather than sites like airbnb (Compelling reason for that choice: No shared bathrooms :P).

Southwest Airlines: Once you create a login on Southwest, it allows you to cancel or change your bookings while crediting the amount back to your Southwest account even if not refunding in cash. The only hitch is that you have to make a new booking in the name of the same passenger that you canceled for, which means you can re-plan only so many times within a fixed itinerary. My strategy was to leave the last couple of bookings for the end, so that I could do any re-adjustments with remaining cash while completing those. Worked well, though I say so myself ;).

I know I have mentioned Southwest quite often already, but the convenience of planning on it has been really great. Only hitch might be that they have no seat assignments so for a family of 4 we might need to reach the airport and check in a bit early on each flight to be able to get at least 2 seats together every time. Once again, wish us luck on what's definitely going to be an interesting holiday and the most detailed one I have ever planned :).

Note: Too late for that luck ;). I had written this post before leaving, but didn't manage to wrap up and post it then :P. Wanted to add that the Southwest boarding procedure is actually very cool, and is based on the time that you check in. Online check-in starts 24 hours before departure, and you will be assigned a boarding group (A,B,C) and a number (1-60). Boarding the flight starts 30 minutes before departure, and goes from A-C groups seamlessly. Hidden advantage of traveling with young children - they allow you to board between Group A and B anyway ;).

All Set! - at the swanky Bangalore Airport