Day 20 ~ San Francisco Day 2
I added a part to day 19. I felt that I had to get permission from H. before I shared it because he felt pretty bad that we were mad at him.
The plan was to get up early by Pacific Standard Time and get onto Highway 1 well before rush hour traffic. We had to be at Pier 33 to pick up our tickets in an 8:00-8:30 window. So we left at 6:00 AM. The elevator in my stomach hit the bottom floor when we merged onto stopped traffic on Highway 1. Apparently, 6:00 AM is still part of rush hour. Dang.
We still got there with some time to find parking, but finding parking was dicey. I read online that you couldn't get parking at the pier as there were only a few spaces. Later we saw that we could have, probably since we were early. At any rate, after driving around vying for positions and trying to quickly read what the parking garage signs said, we opted for an expensive,
obvious lot right on the main road. But Ta Da! Score for Michael! We happened to get an early bird rate so it was only 15.00 for the whole day! And the car was parked in a convenient location!
Everything went well. We got our tickets, used the restrooms, and boarded the ferry. The boys were interested in the electric run ferries that also used generated wind power.
 |
| Huge Succulents |
 |
| The Cellblock |
 |
| The Golden Gate Bridge Never Came out of the Fog Today! We could only see the bottom of it. |
Once at Alcatraz, we watched the movie, took the audio cell block tour, bought some postcards, and took a million pictures for my files and another million of other vacationers, who asked me to snap their pictures. I like to do this for people. It is so nice. I always take like 15 for them instead of one, and they are always thrilled because everyone wants pictures of themselves with their significant other to post on Facebook, but never want to ask someone to take them.
There was a great deal of flora and fauna of which to snap photos. Evidently, the prisoners and families that lived there once upon a time, planted and tended the flowers there. It was pleasant mind escape for some of the prisoners.
Now were you asking yourself, "Did she just say that families lived at Alcatraz?" Yes! They did. The workers at Alcatraz lived in apartments on Alcatraz. The children took a ferry boat to San Francisco each day for school. Evidently, according to recordings of the children, it was a pleasant experience!
Before it was a maximum security prison, it was a military fortress during the Civil War, then a military prison. In the 20's it was converted to a maximum security prison for gangsters, such as Al Capone. (An old friend of our family! Ha ha ha.) (Actually, he was......but that is a different story!)
The audio tour was a cross between creepy and interesting.
 |
 |
| Deluxe Accommodations |
 |
| A Bar Bender Tooled for an unsuccessful Escape |
 |
| See the Pink Crocheting? One prisoner taught several others to crochet like his grandma taught him. |
 |
| Office |
 |
| Cement Drilled Out with a Spoon. Then escape through the service hatch. |
 |
| Kitchen ~ Knives outlined on the wall helped them see in an instant if a knife was missing. |
 |
| Best Mean Gangster Face |
 |
| 24/7 Manned Watchtower |
 |
| Family Apartments, Warden's Home (Shell), and Lighthouse |
We lost Harrison again at one point because he kept stopping his audio to read everything. If you know Harrison you will totally get this! So we had to make a pact, to stop our audio recordings and wait until we were all together and ready to move on to the next room or subject matter. There were a LOT of people touring the grounds, and it was often hard to see everything that the audio tour was describing.
We caught the ferry back to San Francisco
We were starving by now because it was about 4:00PM Eastern Time. We don’t bother buying the Hard Rock glasses anymore because I broke the Honolulu one in the dishwasher. Since we can’t replace that one very easily, I sold the rest of them on the garage sale. Our Hard Rock tally is now: Chicago, Indianapolis, San Juan, St. Thomas, Honolulu, San Antonio, New York, and now San Francisco. Food good, but over priced. Yada, yada, yada. The kids enjoyed it. We sat right under the Journey guitar, which is Harrison’s favorite 80’s group. Don’t Stop Belivin’.
Then we walked around Pier 39.
We saw the seals, which is pretty much what we felt like after eating all the lunch at Hard Rock.
I found a Lefty Store for Natalie, who is left handed.
Then we walked to Ghirardelli Square, but we weren’t hungry enough for ice-cream yet. So we walked all the way to China Town, which is about 5 miles round trip. Getting to China Town we took the hard way up, up, up, up, up……If you have never been to San Francisco, you just can’t imagine how steep the streets are!
 |
| Posing with Everyone Else in Chinatown |
We browsed around China Town a bit, then got drinks at Subway. Since Mike had driven around so much yesterday, he figured out that there was a way to walk back to Ghirardelli without traversing those hills. I was so confused by the diagonal streets that nothing made sense to me.
Back at Ghirardelli we had huge ice cream sundaes. I have wanted to go to Ghirardelli for a long time now. There is one at Downtown Disney in Disney World. We have probably been there 10 times now, but never got ice-cream because we were always “full.” So this was pretty exciting to me. However, I think I would have enjoyed it more 10 years ago, because now it was too much and too sweet! I have tried to change my eating, and I guess it is paying off! The kids and Mike loved it though!
 |
| Butterscotch Sundae |
 |
| Chocolate Sundae |
Only regret today was that we would have liked to ride the Trolley, but we were so tired after Ghirardelli that we trekked back to our car and headed back to the Petaluma KOA.
Tomorrow, we are going to start towards Yosemite.
No comments:
Post a Comment