#when i toured the jeremiah o'brien with a guy who'd served on a picket ship (already fucking awesome because i LOVE norad history)

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Actually, fun fact from a local... Unless you’re a roller coaster nerd, I’m preeeeeeeeetty sure the cost to visit the USS Hornet, the USS Pampanito, and the SS Jeremiah O’Brien is about equal (maybe $10-$15 more) than the cost of going to California’s Great America, so like. If you wanna get your bang for your buck in the bay, that’s where I’d go lol.

The USS Hornet, for those of you who don’t know, is the USN carrier which recovered Apollos 11 and 12, so space nerds who visit, I’m sorry but you’re contractually obligated to go there. (Send photos because I can’t go with my summer camp this year and I’m sad about it.)

The Pampanito is a Balao-class submarine from 1944ish, and the one I know the least about out of the three tbh but STILL a SUPER badass one to visit (but I recommend doing it with the audio tour, because there isn’t much signage inside of the sub to tell you what you’re looking at.)

The Jeremiah O’Brien is one of the few remaining Liberty Ships from WWII and the only operational one left at all. If you want some cool shots of her engine room, she was actually featured in the movie Titanic, and they still have the log for the engine shots they got trying to get the scene where they reverse it! So much cooler to be in the engine room though (while it’s parked lol). It was on the news recently because it was near the fire on that dock, but it only suffered a little bit of paint blistering.

Tl;dr CGA is cool, Flight Deck is cool, but being on the ACTUAL FUCKING USS HORNET is so much cooler. I’m a little out of touch with what tourists tend to do in the bay but ngl if I was planning a tour for any of y’all those are three places I’d say you really have to see.