San Francisco, California
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
This morning we took a fun ride on a cable car on our way to the Alcatraz tour at Pier 33. Cable Cars are similar to our
Melbourne trams except they are pulled along by cables that run under the road and are attached to the trolley by a hook and not by external wires. At the end of the line the trams are turned around on a turntable, it takes two people to do this. It was a bit worrying going down
San Francisco's steep roads and watching the driver put in a lot of effort to stop the cable car. You can also ride on the outside platforms and hold on for dear life, we call it tram surfing in
Melbourne and it's illegal, nothing like living dangerously in
San Francisco. The conductor a Chinese-American with a great accent was hilarious with wise cracks about the cable car system. We got dropped off at the top of Fisherman's Wharf and walked down to Pier 33 to catch our ferry to Alcatraz. The ferry ride was about 10 minutes and it's a steep walk up the hill to the prison. We picked up our headphones and audio set for a self guided audio tour through the prison
. It was a great audio tour with commentary from ex prison guards and prisoners. Back on the mainland we had a delicious lunch at the restaurant Fog Harbour on Pier 39 with great views of
San Francisco bay and Alcatraz Island and true to it's name there was a distance blanket of fog over the bay, just perfect. Here we had the most amazing blue cheese herb garlic bread, some great seafood and a very strong Margarita cocktail.
After lunch we walked around Pier 39 and saw the sea lions lazing in the sun on planks right next to the Pier. The kids went on the carousel and we browsed through the stores.
We took the bus back to the hotel, a much cheaper option to the Cable Cars which were $6 a trip.
We had a quiet night in with room service, Sammy exhausted fell asleep early. We watched some quality local television, The Great Food Truck Race, where food vans go to different towns and compete, Storage Wars, where people compete at storage auctions hoping to grab some bargains and my all time favourite, Hoarders.
Next Stop: Golden Gate Bridge and Groveland
