USA Holiday, October 26 (Escape From Alcatraz)

First stop of the day was a ferry ride over to Alcatraz Island. One particular company has the rights to land on and tour the island, so you have to book with them. Before you leave the dock they take photos of each group with a backdrop of the island and try to sell them to you when you return, for like $20 or something ridiculous. Why would I pay for that when I'm going to the island and can take my own photos and videos ?

The ferry ride only takes about 10-15 minutes or so, and because the boat is so big and slow I think it's practically impossible to get seasick, which is always good. When you arrive on the island there's a big building at the bottom which has a bookstore and information, so we didn't go in there, and I'm not sure what it's actual purpose was back in the day. Rather you make your way up the winding hill to the main building at the top. There's various smaller buildings you pass along the way, in various stages of decay and disrepair.

When you reach the main building you have to line up to get your headset and audio device for the audio tour. A bunch of tourist locations have these audio tours, basically they talk you through the area, and stop at various points along the way to describe what you're looking at. This tour was quite informative and fairly well done, but sometimes spent a bit too long at each point. The only downside of these audio tours is you basically spend the whole tour walking alongside the same group of people - those people that pressed play the same time as you.

The most surprising thing for me was that the main building was a lot smaller in capacity that I would have expected. Just one large room full of cells with three levels. The highlight was of course seeing the areas involved in the famous escape.

Fun fact of the day: Alcatraz wasn't just for the worst prisoners, it was where people that were acting up at other prisons were sent if they wouldn't cooperate.

I'm On A Boat. The landscape looking back at SF, should be pretty familiar by now.

Main building and lighthouse at the top, water tower to the right.

The electric shop, where they made electrics.

The audio tour at this point states that during an attempted escape some prisoners kidnapped some guards and climbed up to that second level and through the bars somehow (to the gun gallery). Seems a little unbelievable to me. Anyway, that's why everyone is looking in that direction.

The escape hallway.

The escape cell.

Being at the north shore side of San Francisco, the famous Pier 39 tourist attraction was close by. Pier 39 has a number of nice shops and restaurants right on the pier. There was a store that sold only NFL merchandise, but the main focus was on the SF and Oakland teams and local college teams, so I didn't find anything I was after.

The other attraction of Pier 39 is of course the sea lions. Basically they just lay around on top of each other and made a whole lot of noise, but it was a spectacle.

Magnets.

More magnets.

The final stop for the day was the Golden Gate Bridge, which is further to the west along the north coast, past the Marina district. You can rent bikes from several stores along the coast here, and there's a path so you can ride all the way up to and across the bridge. Looking back, this would have been preferable to getting the bus up there and then walking over, as my feet and legs were doing about as well as yesterday.

The coast leading around to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Lots of rivets.

The view to the north, there's not much there.

A bit more activity to the south.

The BART train station was a lot closer for the trip back to the hotel, so we got that instead. The BART ticketing system is really weird, you load money onto the BART card and you are charged based on where you travel to and from. So, this means you have to look at this wacky chart and preload your card before you get on, then hope you've entered the right amount when your card gets deducted at the other end.

The BART electronic displays were about as useless as the Caltrain. All they said was the line that you were waiting for, they didn't say anything about the train being express (which it was) or that it can take two different routes to get to the end of the line.

For dinner I had self-serve frozen yoghurt + toppings. America seems to be big on the frozen yoghurt thing, and there's a bunch of stores where you can mix your own - they usually have some interesting flavours - and then add your own toppings. Brilliant.