SAN FRANCISCO

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Friday 1st October

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We arrived into San Francisco international airport late last night and stAyed at an airport hotel not to far from the arrival terminal.

In the morning we caught the B.A.R.T train into Powell Street which is in the centre of San Fran (pop 3,000,000). The hostel was only a couple of hundred yards away on Mason Street from the station so we quickly dumped the bags and took a walk uphill to the top of Mason Street till we arrived at Lombard street where the famous crooked street is.
A few photos later we then moved on to Fisherman's wharf which was another mile walk downhill through the beautiful streets of San Francisco. San Fran has a very cosy feel about it and is very clean for a large city.

When we arrived at Fisherman's wharf we stopped for a bite to eat in Hard Rock cafe and stuffed our faces to wipe away the memories of Mexican food!! Average food for big money to be honest but we were starving and just wanted a burger!
Later on we booked tickets for our Alcatraz Island tour for the following day as we had hoped to go today but it was sold out even though there were 4 more boats that day!! A popular tour indeed!

Fisherman's wharf is where the fishing piers are although most are disused now and are tourist attractions ranging from restaurants, bars and coffee shops. There's lots of people walking around as its far too busy with tourists. Maybe the best thing here are the street actors & musicians who are all talented people showing off their impressive skills. Further along is the Embarcadero which goes all the round the Wharf to the Bay Bridge and financial district. You have to visit the wharf once as you cant resist it even though its a bit tacky.

We headed for Taylor Street in the opposite direction where we caught the old fashioned tram at the turning point which would take us too Union Square, the main shopping hub.
The tram ride was exciting as we stood on the side steps rather than sitting down and it only cost us two bucks each. We learned on this journey there was originally 56 old trams like this one operating in the city but now there are only 3 left in operation.
There are still lots of F trams in service which are more frequent and are electric powered from wires above as opposed to the underground cables like the old fashioned ones.
The up hill & down hill journey was great and as we arrived at Union Square we realised we had to catch our hop on hop off bus back down at the wharf at the main office not the in town one! Hey ho! Off back down on a $2 tram we goes. This is fun!!

Once we arrived back at the wharf we decided to do the Golden gate bridge tour as it was a beautiful day and the forcast for the following day wasn't too great so we thought we'd best go while the going was good as clouds can ruin a good bridge tour.

The bus left Fisherman's wharf at 5pm & our tour guide was very informative & described various important buildings on route, such as the famous Del Monte cannery factory and also the Del monte towers which are an eyesore to be fair! Also there was the Argonout hotel which is in the old cannery building and is meant to be one of the best hotels in San Fran.

Steve the tour guide also described to us the major earthquake & fire of 1906 which wiped out three quarters of San Fran. The military got involved just in time & managed to make a stand to prevent the fire from spreading to the rest of the city and avoid a total wipe out.

We could see the Golden Gate Bridge as we approached & it looked totally awesome!!! Before we knew it we hit the bump that signified the start of the bridge. Apparently the bridge has enough steel wire in its construction to circle the earth 4 times!
It's free to cross leaving the city however 6 bucks to return. We crossed the bridge & parked up at the vista point which is a view point of the city & bridge with spectacular views of the city, bridge and the island of Alcatraz. We took some photos & vidoe footage & then we moved onto Sausalito, a small quaint little town 5 minutes from here still on the opposite side of the bay from San Fran.

The average prices of property in Sausalito is approx 2 million bucks & you can see why.
There was a house for sale here at 66 million dollars!! Driving through the main street there were 7 jeweller stores which was more than half the shops here! Its very nice and the boats in the marina said it all.
We did a quick 5 min tour around here & the marina then headed back over the bridge in heavy traffic which was cool because we travelled over the bridge at a slower pace allowing us to take more photos and admire the views.

As we left the bridge our tour guide Steve told us the large buildings on our right was the Lucas Arts studios from which George Lucas wrote the Star Wars movies. Apparently he got infulenced from the massive cranes at the harbour from which he got the idea for the Imperial walkers in the films. Across from the studios, there is the Palace of Fine Arts with a domed roof which funnyily enough looks like R2D2!!!

We arrived back at the wharf & hopped on the night tour bus which proceeded to take us through the North Beach district where Little Italy is. The lamp posts here have the Italian flag painted on them signifing these streets are in the little italy area. Here lies Washington Square which is nice as it provides a focal point for the area.

Past Little Italy we drove up through Chinatown which is located in the heart of the city bordered by Kearny and the Financial District to the East.
San Fran has the largest Chinese community out with China and it appears that way judging by the size of th area we passed through. Its about the only place we didnt visit in San Fran as we will be visiting China one day.

We also past the area called "the tenderloin" which got it's name in the 60's as the crimerate was so high it was even unsafe for the police to walk about. the local business men suffered so they used to bribe policemen with tenderloin steaks in exchange for patrolling the area.
Nowadays the area is fine and safe. Just outside this area we arrived at the Civic center where you can find the city hall, an impressive building with the largest gold leafed domed roof in America. Within this area you can also see the State building, Herbst theater, opera house and the Symphony Hall. Across the road from city hall was the Chinese Art centre which holds many valuable Chinese artifacts, the largest collection is here on loan from China and in front of city hall there is a very large sculpture of Bhudda.

We also went passed the Alamo park where the 5 famous victorian houses called the "5 Sisters" were built. This is the most popular photographed street in San Fran, especially for postcards. These victorian houses are over 100 years old & like many of the other victorian styled houses in this area are beautiful to look and very expensive to buy. One of the houses next to the 5 sisters was for sale for 4 million dollars which is a lot of money if you consider these buildings have high maintanence due to being made purely of wood & other perisible materials. They need constant care & attention and most of them aren't level due to earthquakes.

We carried onwards up Nob Hill where we jumped off at Mason street to walk back to the hostel to get ready to go out for the night. We went to a local club to see a French musician that we have seen before who plays electro music on keyboards and drum machines. We had a few beers & waited and waited in the club until 1am at which point he finally appeared and started his set & finished at 3am & we went home tired but happy even though it rained on the way home.

Saturday 2nd October

In the morning we went into Union Square area for a bit of shopping. We then caught the F tram to Fisherman's wharf to catch our boat to Alcatraz.
It was a 10 min boat ride over to Alcatraz 7 as we docked on "The Rock" we were given a quick 5 min safety indtroduction to the island in which we were told the do's & dont's.
We made our own way up to the A block & stood in a queue in the old shower rooms of the prison waiting for our audio headsets which would give us a narrated tour of the cell block.
We are now standing at block A with headphones on looking rather stupid but as the narrated story was being told the sounds effects started kicking in, it became real.

The United States Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz was acquired by the United States Department of Justice in 1933, and the island became a prison in August 1934. During the 29 years it was in use, the jail held such criminals as Al Capone, Robert Franklin Stroud (the Birdman of Alcatraz), George "Machine Gun" Kelly, James "Whitey" Bulger, Arthur R. "Doc" Barker and Alvin Karpis.
It also provided housing for the Bureau of Prison staff and their families.

During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed no prisoners had ever successfully escaped. 36 prisoners were involved in 14 attempts, two men trying twice.
23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape. Three were lost at sea and never found but we think they escaped because their bodies were never found.
The most violent escape attempt occurred on May 2, 1946 when a failed escape attempt by six prisoners led to the so-called Battle of Alcatraz in which 2 wardens were killed and 3 immates also died.

The three prisoners that escaped and never found is best described in the Clint Eastwood film Escape from Alcatraz. They chipped away at the ventilation hole, climbed up the maintenance shaft and on to the roof and then swam off thee island with a home made float made from waterproof jackets. They also made replica's of their heads from paper and soap so the wardens thought they were in their beds as well as making tools from melted down coins. They reckon they drowned but the bodies never found so we like to think they escaped to freedom as you kind of hoped they did as Alcatraz is hell to be fair.

We were given witness accounts on the headsets of all these events and it was a bit scary as the sound effects and background noises on the audio guide as we walked around added to the atmosphere and drama.

We saw a lot more rooms such as the c and d block which was nicknamed seedy street. Also there were areas call times square and broadway, amoungst others. All named after places in New York for some reason, maybe to make light on a dark place. We also visited the isolation cells, the library, the courtyard, kitchen and canteen all while immates and wardens reaccounted the scenes on our audio guide. It was a great experience all round and we really enjoyed our visit.

Our boat to us back to Fisherman's wharf where we caught our bus to take us on a tour of down town.
We started off driving along the Embarando until we came to the Bay bridge which signified the beginning of the Financial district. This area has the usual American style skyscrapers, which are quite nice to look at towering above us as they are of all shapes and designs. We made our way through to the Union Square shopping area which has all your top names and very high end boutiques such as Gucci, Prada, Paul Smith, Tiffany's and Bvlgari to name a few.
From here we passed Market Street and through the tenderloin, civic square, and around Japantown. We then we headed back down to Union Square we were jumped off & headed towards Macy's & the Cheesecake factory for dinner.
We arrived at the Cheesecake factory on the top floor of Macy's & got told we had to wait for a hour to be seated as it was really busy. We spent this hour returning our shopping to the hostel & on the way back to Macy's we stopped off at Borders for a couple of books.

The selection of dishes on the menu at the cheesecake factory was unbelievable as we were totally spoilt for choice and could not decide what to have for ages.
By the time we finished our meal we were both really stuffed but still managed to buy 2 portions of cheesecake to takeaway for later - total greed!!!
Feeling unwell, through fatness, and tired we headed back to the hostel for an early night's sleep as we will be hitting the road tomorrow afternoon.

{h3] Sunday 3rd October now
we began the day bright & early with our yesterday's cheesecake for breakfast!

Today was our last bus tour which was called the Park Loop which would take us to the museum of Sciences in Golden Gate Park passing the panhandle and alamo park.
On the way to the museum we passed the pan handle park where the flower children of the 60's hung out near to the famous Haight & Ashbury area.
We carried on to the Golden gate park and hopped off at the Science museum which had been newly built at the cost of 5 hundred million dollars!!!
Once we bought our tikcets & headed in we were amazed at the architecture & design of the building, not to mention the animals and aquatic life that was swimming underneath the footpaths & walls around us.
We had been recommended to visit the journey to the stars movie showing in the Planetarium so we got our tickets for the show & browsed around the musuem until it was time to go to the movie.
In the time before the movie we visited the penguins, mantarays, tortoise's,cockroaches and various other living creatures on display. We even got to touch a python snake and saw an albino alligator, which was very unusual!.
It was now time to go to the planeterium and we got lucky as we were the first one's in so we got the centre seats in he 360 degree roof screen. The movie was brilliantly narrated by Whoopi Goldberg taking us on a 20 minute journey through the universe to the stars. It explained the birth of our sun, the creation of other stars & also the effect the sun has on our planet earth. The visuals consisted of actual footage from the hubble telescope and was totally awesome. Understanding the complexity of our solar system seemed simple and interesting to follow and even now we are catching ourselves looking at the stars thinking of the many reasons they are up there.
We walked out after the movie totally amazed & extremely happy of what we had experienced!

We waited for the next bus to take us to the famous Haight & Ashbury streets.
Haight & Ashbury is a hippy like community. It is home to a number of independent restaurants and bars, as well as clothing boutiques, booksellers, head shops and record stores.
I managed to sniff out the Stussy shop & proceeded to spend a small fortune on t-shirts in the sales and in another shop i bought a jacket which ill have to send home.

Time was getting on as we had to be at Alamo car hire within the hour so we jumped in a taxi which took us back to collect our car. The lady kindly told us that we had been upgraded on our car free of charge & that point my brian started ticking!
We were handed the keys & made our way into the car depot & to our amazement we had scored as we had been given a Dodge Charger, 3.5 litre engine! Lovely jubbly.

We got in the car a bit nervous as it is a big car and no sooner had i sat down and started the engine and we were off & driving with Samantha the Sat Nav leading us out of San Francisco.

It was quite an experience driving over the Golden Gate bridge without the safety of a bus and we didn't utter a single word to each other until we'd crossed over.
We drove for another few miles then passed through the famous Napa Valley which we all know is famous for it's grapes & wine. The scenery was changing from mountainous to long flat plains. Time for our first fuel stop and what a mess i made of that. I forgot that you prepay you fuel first and also that you just push a button when the nozzle is in and it does the rest. Im staring at the pump trying to figure out what the deal was for a bout 5 minutes before the fuel stop guy comes out and saves me.

Next stop was originally going to be Sacremento but we decided to haul on & stop at Reno instead and again the terrain changed drastically to very steep hills with large evergreen trees towering over the roadside.
240 miles from San Francisco and we finally arrived at Reno which is a small casino resort. We would only be sleeping the night here before heading off again.
After checking into a Motel 6 on the outskirts of Reno we took a drive into the town centre to view the colourful casinos and bars. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow as we are heading to Salt lake City, 520 miles north east and that's going to be a challenge in itself!

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Photos

Golden gate bridge.
1st time we seen it since arriving!

Street Beggar
I gave him $5 because i giggled for ages when i seen this!!