San Francisco has a number of museums I highly recommend for a visit. There's the De Young, The Palace of the Legion of Honor, The SF Museum of Modern Art, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, and the Asian Art Museum in the Civic Center. The last three in the list are very accessible from downtown. They are all walkable from Union Square although I recommend the MUNI, our local subway system, to reach the Asian Art.

For a very little time, the San Francisco Asian Art Museum in Civic Center played host to a truly wonderful exhibit about Xian's Terracota Warriors. Although Marc and I had been to Mainland China twice, we have never been to Xian. When we learned that some of the statues were being shipped to California for a limited engagement in the City by the Bay, we knew we just had to see it. I liked it so much I actually visited the museum on two separate occasions to see the exhibit. It was a Sunday afternoon when Marc and I went the first time and as you can just imagine the place was bursting at the seams.

Three galleries were used to house the temporary exhibit. We toured all three backwards starting with Gallery 3. My favorite gallery was the one devoted solely to the statues. It was there that I learned the three kinds of statues on display. It is believed that any statue wearing a very heavily decorated armor is a high ranking officer. Then there was the middle officer and the lowly soldier equivalent to the present day military private.