Welcome to the Rock!

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Luckily the weather this morning was much better so I jumped on to a tram from outside my hotel and went down to Fisherman's Wharf, the tourist trap of San Francisco, where I wandered round several shops selling tat before killing some time on Pier 39 in the arcade and seriously considering spending 3 grand I don't have on a signed Dylan guitar.

I'd also booked myself a trip to the prison Island of Alcatraz, which bizarrely enough is now a National Park. On stepping off the ferry, I took a walk to see the surprising amount of wildlife on the island, and some fantastic views of the city and of the Golden Gate bridge, which sadly I wasn't now going to get a chance to see close up.

I then took a tour of the prison itself, which once housed Al Capone and the notorious birdman, who wasn't actually half man, half bird, which would have been way cool. The prison was pretty grim, not the holiday camps inmates criminals stay in in the UK ((c) the Daily Mail), I wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes. I'd have been passed around as currency, with my boyish good looks.

After returning to the mainland, it was too early for dinner so I had a swift half in the Hard Rock cafe before going to a fish restaurant I'd checked out earlier. The food was great, though I still fail to see the difference between chowder and soup.

I planned to have another few beers at the hotel bar on my return, but was scared off by a drunk businessman who told me off for reading the menu in the bar rather than talking to him. So I went to the toilet and never went back after he started making advances on some average looking girls at the end of the bar who he said were 'the most beautiful women in the world' and could 'teach him how to have babies'. I'm not sure what he meant by this, but hope he was planning to impregnate himself a la Arnie in Junior.

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