San Francisco!

On Thursday, Garrett and I took a "day off" by hanging around Amanda and Ray's while they went to work. We slept in, did our laundry, wandered around Davis (had a Starbucks!) and made a quick trip into Sacramento for some shopping.

Amanda was able to get Friday off, so she drove into San Francisco with us for a day of touristing. It was about an hour and a half drive to San Fran, entering over the Bay Bridge and heading into downtown. We got a little lost in the craziness that is a larger metropolitan downtown in the US, but eventually found our way. We drove by Union Square - there it is:There's a streetcar going by near Union Square:We successfully navigated through downtown and drove over the Golden Gate bridge to the tourist viewpoint.There's the bridge on the right:And looking farther to the left, at the downtown and Bay Bridge. Also, you can see Alcatraz Island.We headed back over the bridge and parked at the pier.The pier was really fun and lively! Lively mostly due to the huge tourist burden, but there's always a great feel at piers. Maybe I felt that way because I grew up on the coast and loved wandered along the coastline. In any case, it was fun and the weather was great, so who wouldn't feel great?We were scheduled for a ferry to Alcatraz at 1pm, so we grabbed some sandwiches to go at this neat bakery.The bread travels around the shop in these neat baskets. Mmm, sourdough!We hoofed it over to the pier where our ferry was leaving from. There, we stood in line for the boat.After passing through a super cheesy photo setup (where they took our picture in front of a facade of the island of Alcatraz), we boarded the ferry! And we ate our sandwiches! And they tasted great!!The ferry ride was only about 20 minutes long, but we enjoyed the views as we plugged along through the water. There's Alcatraz in the background!The Bay Bridge:There's downtown San Fran:There's the Golden Gate bridge in the distance:Approaching the island, you see this sign:
Make sure you don't help anyone escape!!Welcome to Alcatraz! The "Indians Welcome" graffiti is residual from a 1964 occupation of the island in protest for Indian rights in the U.S.

We pulled up to the dock to offload and entered Alcatraz. After a brief introduction by a volunteer, we were free to wander around as we wished. We walked up the path towards the jail, stopping briefly to see an informative movie about the island and then continuing on to the entrance to the prison. We passed the water tower on our way up:There's a guard tower:Once inside the building, the ominous atmosphere grips you immediately.We all received audio tours to listen to as we wandered around the jail. I really enjoyed the tour and learned a ton about the prison. Plus, since everyone was walking around in silence, you could really get a feel for the place when you paused the audio tour.We wandered through the jail cells and observed the tiny space the inmates had to live in.We checked out the courtyard and examined the scary fence that kept the criminals in.We saw some caged criminals, but someone let them out of their cell:We wandered into D block to see the solitary confinement cells:We learned about some of the notorious criminals who were held at Alcatraz, including Al Capone, Robert "The Birdman" Stroud and George "Machine Gun" Kelly.We learned about the famous riot in 1946, called the Battle of Alcatraz, where an inmate managed to climb up into the gun gallery, seen below:After overwhelming the guards, the escape attempt was thwarted when the keys the prisoners claimed from the guards didn't actually open the door to the courtyard.

This is what the guard's uniforms looked like:The interesting thing about a lot of the Alcatraz guards was that they lived with their families on the island itself. The children would take a boat every day into San Francisco for school, returning each afternoon to play and live on the island.We took a break from the tour in the courtyard at the top of the island, where the view of San Francisco is fantastic.Some of the buildings on the island have been demolished - you can see some debris in the foreground of the above picture.

Back inside, we finished our audio tours and snapped a few more pictures.We finished our tour in the dining hall, where the menu for the last meal served in the prison was still on the board. The prison was closed in 1963 once costs to run the prison became prohibitive and the Bureau of Prisons' philosophy changed to rehabilitation rather than punishment.While we waited for our return ferry ride to San Fran, we took some shots in front of the Alcatraz sign. We look tough - who would let these thugs leave the island?And now we look normal, so we were allowed to board the ferry and weren't forced to stay there indefinitely.As our ferry drove away, we looked back at the Island to see the courtyard where we had stood on our break (next to the lighthouse).We took some more shots of San Fran downtown and the Golden Gate bridge on our ferry back towards the shore.Once back on land, we headed back towards Pier 39, which is the famous, touristy Pier with lots of shops and of course, the sea lions. Since we didn't have time to ride a street car while we were there, we took a shot of a trolley instead. After walking through the tourist trap to the end of the pier, we took a shot of Alcatraz from land and another one of the Golden Gate bridge. Then we focussed our attention on those sea lion critters.

After all this, we met up with Ray (he bussed into the city after work) and went for a nice dinner at a restaurant called The Palomino. After a great dinner, we packed back into the car and headed for home. After such a long day, it was nice to nap in the car on the drive home. Even though we would have liked to have done a bit more in San Francisco, it was a great day and I know Garrett and I will have time to explore that city more in the future.