My Cali Trip (Part 2)

Hi again! This is part 2 of my Cali trip. I had to do more than one part because I didn't want the post to be too long. So welcome to part 2. :)

Now, a continuation of the Berkeley experience... This is the University of California, Berkeley's Campanile. It is called The Campanile due to its resemblance of the tower, Campanile di San Marco, in Venice. Its other name is the Sather Tower. This is UC Berkeley's most recognizable symbol. I actually did get to go to the top, and it was awesome!!! You could see so much from the top.  It's definitely a place to visit if you ever go to Berkeley. 

This is the same picture as above but its a sort of a silhouette. Even though it is a silhouette, the picture became very dull. 

This is at the top of the Campanile. I believe the tower is 8 stories high and the observatory deck is on the eight floor. At the top, there are 12 bells with one of them as the main one. These are some bells with the sun lighting the picture up... The weather was great that day. Clear skies, warm temperatures with a little bit of wind. And such temperatures a bit rare in the Bay Area. :)

The architecture inside the Campanile was stunning. It was very European and detailed. I actually took this in a partially black and white filter. It made it mostly black and white, but you can see the sky is still a bit blue. I also added a border around the edges. It is a faded black, which blends in with the picture. 

Another thing that we visited was the botanical gardens in Berkeley. We heard that this super rare plant has bloomed and it's a must see. So we went to see it. Now this rare plant is called the Queen of Andes. Scientific name, Puya raimondii. So these don't bloom every year, and when it does, it's a special occasion. Luckily, it bloomed that year and we went to see it. This is the plant in the picture below. They have these very, very spiky leaves sticking out, like a bush at the bottom. And for a height comparison, I was about two-thirds the height of the bush at the bottom. It was humongous! The thing is, there were two other plants right next to it and those didn't bloom. So it was just this one that bloomed. The plant blooms flowers at the part that sticks out of the bush. (The tall part.) It was really nice seeing such a rare plant bloom.

This is the same plant, The Queen of Andes. In this picture, I got a closer look at the plant with the sun in the way. If you look closely at the...leaves... sticking out from the bottom, you can see the thorns. 

This was something unique that we crossed on the way to Berkeley from the Oakland direction. The architecture of it looks so puzzling and different. I've never seen five roads overlap like that. Which is why I took this picture. It was hard to get an angle where you could see all five of them as we were driving. So I took heaps of pictures before I got this picture. 

So after the Berkeley experience, we just drove around the Stanford campus. This is the Stanford Business School. The whole campus is so beautiful. Stanford is so different from Berkeley though. Well of course the only reason is that Stanford is a private college and UC Berkeley is a state college. But another thing is the campus. UC Berkeley blends in with the city. The campus mixes in with the city. For example, some of the dorms are right across from restaurants. All the restaurants and stores are a walkable distance from the schools, which is so convenient. On the other hand, Stanford is a closed campus. All the schools are all within the campus and there are no stores inside (as far as I know)...So the colleges are so different, but both have their own beauties. 

So that concludes part 2. See part three for more of California!