Since I had already done most of the main things in Amsterdam, and I had an extra monday where most museums are closed, so it was a good time to check out the Botanical Garden and the Zoo.
The botanical garden was quite nice and had a fun butterfly nursery:
they had interesting butterflies I had never seen before
this transparent one is also quite interesting
this one was still blood in its wings after being born
Next door was the artis zoo complex, which included 2 museums, Micropia, was quite cool:
Watching the leaf cutter ant display was mesmerizing, you could spend a while staring at it:
The other small museum nextdoor also had interesting displays:
Then, I went to see the actual zoo. I should have done this first because rain was scheduled and I ended up only seeing about half because pouring rain made it no fun, and many animals also went to hide:
The highlight was seeing two boobies doing a mating dance, watch the video:
It had been 3 years since I last saw Brian Cox give a live talk in the Bay Area, and this one was similar in format to the talk he gave in 2019.
Just like last time, his talk was a bit more technical than Neil deGrasse Tyson at San Jose Center for Performing Arts, and this time touched about an interesting point where time slows down as you approach a black hole, but once you go to a critical point, time actually stops, and then equations actually predict that time runs backwards. This is where it gets complex and the equations predict that time and space actually reverse. That was cool indeed.
That said, just like last time, he came with his sidekick Robin Ince, who isn't exactly the funiest comedian I've seen and honestly detracts more than he adds to the evening. Oh well, it was still nice to see his version of the talk. I have a pretty bad partial recording here:
