On our walk to the Mission District in San Francisco, we walked by some interesting buildings, parks and plazas.
One that really stood out for me was the United Nations Plaza at Market Street and 10th Street.
What really caught my eyes was the beautiful classical dome building with modern lamp stands lining symmetrically in the plaza.
I am a fan of architecture and am often drawn to magnificent and historic buildings.
This time we were standing right in the actions of San Francisco - the Civic Centre.
We did not go into the Civic Centre as there were quite a number of interesting outside installations right in the plaza.
The long wooden sticks hanging in this urban park looked interesting, so we stopped for a few minutes to find out what these sticks were about.
This particular station was called Tick Tock Walk.
Not far from the Tick Tock Walk, we saw another activity installation composed by a gravel path.
People took turns and were gingerly walking on this path.
The goal was to walk as gently and quietly as possible from one end of the gravel path to the end.
There was a score marker at the end tracking how loud one was walking
My husband and I tried this challenge and walked on this gravel path as quietly as we could.
It was not as easy as we thought!
We walked too loudly and the scale went through the roof!
A kind gentleman working at this station demonstrated to us how one could walk quietly without making any noise at all.
His score was 0.1 which meant he hardly made any noise at all walking on this gravel path.
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| The Chime Line at the United Nations Plaza, San Francisco |
The next station we wen to experiment was the Chime Line.
A pretty winding wooden path raised above the grassy lawn flanked by tall metal poles.
Visitors to this area were encouraged to ring these chimes and try to feel the vibrations in their bodies.
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| Xylophones Station, United Nations Plaza |
Not far from the Chimes, there were a number of Xylophones with a sign above them to encourage people to make music together by trying their hands on these musical instruments.
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| Echo Tubes for people to explore their own echos |
There was a big long aluminum tube running across a part of the park.
" What is this?" I wondered myself.
These were Echo Tubes!
Visitors were invited to clap, talk, sing or yell and listen to the sound that bounce back to them.
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| I shouted into the Echo Tube |
I shouted into one of the echo tubes.
Was the echo the same as the sound we sent out ?
No! We learned that the sound we sent out reacted with the environment and it came back sounding differently to ours.
Not only did we have a fun experience with the various sound installations and musical instruments in the United Nations Plaza. We also saw some grand buildings such as the Orphlum Theatre.
It was barely 5:30pm; there was a huge lineup of people waiting to purchase their tickets for the evening show at the theatre.
We also came across some fun characters, such as this lady walking with a cat sitting on her head. We happened to be walking in the direction as she was.
She walked for more than a block with this cute cat in this manner.
It was an enjoyable outing for us, exploring on our own and experimenting with the fun activities at the Untied Nations Plaza.
R.T.
United Nations Plaza
San Francisco
April. 2017
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