Berkeley Day 4

I slept in on my final day in Berkeley, which allowed Mary to work on her newest paper. After we got ready, ate breakfast and I packed my bags, we headed out for a few more hours of fun before my flight. First, we went to the new Cathedral in Oakland: The Cathedral of Christ of Light. Apparently, there is a lot of controversy about the design of the church since it is unusual and the cost because it was extremely expensive. The inside is better looking than the outside, but I wasn't able to take any pictures. Mary and I went downstairs to the mausoleum. It was a beautiful mausoleum and much more traditional than the cathedral above. Below, the first picture is the outside of the Cathedral and the bottom two are of the mausoleum.

After finishing up at the Cathedral, Mary took me to the East Bay Vivarium. Mary has been wanting to go to here for several years, but no one would go with her. Despite, my fear of snakes I was ready to go (she took me shopping at places that neither of us could afford the last time I came to visit, so I owed her one). One of Mary's roommates met us there and we spent a long time looking at all of the critters. I was only able to take one picture of one of the animals, which I believe is a red snapper water turtle.

Next we went to lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant near UC Berkeley. Mary had to meet her PhD advisor to talk about her upcoming paper, so I headed to a coffee shop. I grabbed an Americano and kept reading Ken Follett's riveting 1989 novel The Pillars of the Earth. It was 973 pages of glory. It was an amazing book and I finished it in about two weeks. I can't believe that there wasn't a slow part in the entire book! Anyway, after Mary was finished with her appointment she picked me up and then we hung out at her house for a while before I headed to the airport. Mary dropped me off about three hours before my flight because she had to get back to the lab and I hung out in the airport reading until my flight.

Overall, it was a great trip and I had an amazing time.