San Francisco

Golden Gate Bridge on a rainy day

We booked in for an Alcatraz tour in the morning Of our first full day. We only just made the boat over because Kitty was late getting out of bed and it took us a little while to figure out the public transport. Alcatraz sits on an island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay and has amazing views of both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge gets all the press but the Bay Bridge is actually way more interesting - it's just not orange.

View to the Bay Bridge from the boat.

Looking back to San Fran, weather much improved!

Our first view of Alcatraz

As always, prison tours are a great reminder that it's a good thing to be a law abiding citizen. The admission ticket included an audio tour of the cellhouse, which was narrated by former guards and prisoners. The facilities were decent enough for a prison but we found it really interesting that the guards' families lived on the island as well and the children used to catch the boat across to San Francisco to go to school. The prisoners also built gardens on the island that were coming into bloom when we were visiting. The contrast between the gardens and the ruined buildings was cool. We spent around 3 hrs on the island before heading back to the mainland and having lunch at the Ferry Building. There were so many good looking grocery stores there Kitty got a bit of food envy.

View along the cell blocks

Looking out the proposed escape route of one failed (and bloody)  escape attempt.

A cell, no privacy of course

The gardens and wildlife are slowly claiming back the island

Some of the terraced gardens build by the prisoners.

A nesting area where buildings have collapsed

It´s very pretty in a weird way.

Flowers looking back to the American Flag & prison.

More of the Prisoners gardens

They´re slowly renewing the old gardens

Fencing still separates some areas

We walked up though Chinatown to Powell St where we got on one of San Francisco's famous cable cars to Lombard Street, a really steep street with 8 hairpin turns in one block. Apparently it used to just go straight up the hill but the turns were put in to allow cars to go up it. The views from the top were pretty amazing.

View down Lombard St

View back to Alcatraz along the cable car route

We walked further down Lombard Street towards the Marina and got on a bus that took us through the Presidio and dropped us off at Haight Ashbury, which is a suburb that's a cross between the Valley and Nimbin. We grabbed a coffee and checked out the local colour. We walked into Golden Gate Park and immediately got offered weed, mushrooms and other organic edibles. We settled for just going for a walk.

A pretty pond in the park

Artwork on Haight St

The next day was the Saint Patrick's Day celebration so we spent the morning there watching the parade until Kitty got mad that the Sinn Fein were marching. We got on a bus down to the Mission to get ice cream at Humphrey Slocombe. Their speciality is called Secret Breakfast and is made from bourbon and cornflakes. We both had a scoop of that and Kitty also had olive oil flavour which she reckons might be the best ice-cream she's tasted. Lawrie had coffee flavour.

The Dome on Town Hall

This one has rear steer wheels from behind the ladder - making it look like it´s powersliding!

Old School Fire truck

Irish Wolfhounds

We walked back to our hotel (about 15 blocks) and on the way we saw a sign for The American Bookbinders Museum. We stopped off and spent an hour there looking at the old binding machines and talking to the guy who worked there about the evolution of binding. It was just fascinating.

Sunday was raining and cold and we decided to have a down day. It turned out to be a good idea because we went out once and everything seemed to go wrong and everyone was cranky.

We've been having trouble finding a computer that will accept SD card or USB input so we haven't yet edited any of the photos that we've taken. Hopefully we'll find one before we leave the US (note: this didn´t happen!)