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Published: September 4th 2012
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Today was our busiest day yet. We had an early rise and were down at Pier 33by
9am for our Alcatraz Tour. The city, in true San Francisco style was shrouded with fog, making the trip out to Alcatraz an unusual one. The captain had to sound his horn every few minutes, as it was impossible to see more than a few metres in front of the boat. Thankfully it had lifted slightly by the time we disembarked, but still no view back to the city. The tour of the cell block was amazing. It was self-guided with each of us having a headset with a recording of the history of The Rock so we could travel through at our own pace, pausing the recording when we felt like it. Only difficulty for us was trying to keep an eye on the kids who were often at different parts of the recording so wandered off to where the recording was directing them to. With thousands of people everywhere they were hard to keep track of!One thing we learnt was that all prisoners received a "rule book" on incarceration, and Brett and I found a couple of rules which we thought we
would adopt for the Hjorth family: Regulation # 5 : You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else that you get is a privilege.Regulation # 23: If you make groundless complaints for the purpose of creating dissatisfaction and/or stirring up trouble, you will be subject to disciplinary action. In the afternoon we took a three and a half hour city tour which was amazing. It took in Union Square, Chinatown, The Painted Ladies (a row of houses made famous by Fullhouse) The Haight district, The Mission District, Pacific Heights (an expensive part of town to live), Twin Peaks (which delivered a fabulous view of the city), Lombard Street, Golden Gate Park (a large park which is even bigger than Central Park in New York),past the Palace of Fine Arts, The Presidio (another large ex-military park near Golden Gate Bridge) and of course The Golden Bridge (or GGB as Sarah calls it). Unfortunately by the time we got to the GGB the fog had rolled in again and there was nothing to be seen. Just as well we had already been across the bridge on our "big red shiny Mac fire engine" as the tour guide liked
to call it. Our tour guide was great, and even took us on a roller coaster ride down the hills of San Francisco, trying to re-enact scenes from the the movie "The Bullet" though we think the movie should be renamed "The Scream"! Great fun for sure! We finished by trying to buy icecream sundaes from Giroldelli Chocolate Shop, a fab shop renowned for its chocolate, but being Labour Day weekend the queue was massive and it would have been over an hour wait, so that idea was abandoned. Crazy busy down at Fishermans Wharf with people everywhere but managed to find somewhere to eat. The wait for the tram ride back to our hotel was going to be over 40 minutes, so we took to the hills and walked home once more. This city is very hilly, and our Hotel, which is located on Nob Hill, is right at the very top making for a steep walk! The kids once again were amazing and have never complained once about all the walking we have been doing. Obviously all the cross country training had paid off, and they are fit enough to cope.
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The Creahans
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Happy Birthday Emma!
Hope you are having a great day Emma. Enjoy your American birthday, hope you love the Rainforest Café. We can well relate to the Labour weekend crowds after having endured bank holiday weekend in London and a public holiday at Disneyland! Enjoy your last day in San Fran and safe travels driving on the wrong side of the road.