Advertisement
Well it really was a very long flight but we had some wonderful views on the way and the pilot ‘put his foot down’ so we gained an hour, so in total it was just over 15 hours flying time. We actually flew over the
North Pole and it was just amazing seeing it from the air - massive ice fields, icebergs and crevices everywhere it was like looking at a giant wedding cake with all the icing cracking. We then had really good views of the
Canadian Rockies covered in snow - awesome. Coming into San Francisco we flew over the
Golden Gate Bridge and again the views were great we were very fortunate indeed.
We were determined to stay awake to try and get into the local time zone so finally put our heads down after 25 hours without sleep and quickly drifted off to the ringing of the manually operated cable cars going up and down the street outside our hotel. My sprained ankles did not take kindly to the flight so they looked a bit like two blue balloons, hopefully they will improve after some rest. The Chancellor Hotel staff have been
great and have loaned me a walking stick to help me get around better - Paul wanted to take a photo but I would not let him! So we have been very very 'slowly' walking the streets of San Francisco and indeed it’s very hard not to start humming along to well known songs like, ‘Are you going to San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair’ sung by Scott McKenzie and written by John Phillips of the renowned
The Mamas and the Papas, one of my favourites groups of those days. Another song we well remember from the year that our daughter Sharon was born was
‘Sitting on the Dock of the Bay’ by Otis Redding. Otis died young in a plane crash in December 1967, six weeks before the song was released and just a few days after he recorded it. It was by far his biggest hit and was also the first ever posthumous No 1 single in the USA. Redding was a rising star moving towards 'Big Time' success at the time of his death, such a shame what wonderful music he would have produced. As a point of interest, Redding died five months
before Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, where the song was recorded - the mood of 'peace and harmony' evoked in the song gave way to angry racial tensions.
San Francisco is a very vibrant diverse city and we met some very colourful and interesting people in the bar each evening, obtaining some helpful information on where to go and what to do in the city. One evening we chatted to Rick and Kellie, a couple from Victoria on Vancouver Island who invited us for a BBQ when we get to their part of the world in Canada in a couple of months time - how kind. We would also like to say a very big thank you to Dave and Merry Jo Binkley, fellow bloggers who used to live in San Francisco and have emailed us with useful advise regarding our travel plans for not only San Francisco but also our visits to the National Parks of USA - thank you so much.
The first thing we did in the City was to purchase passes to enable us to travel on a multitude of public transport; cable car,
streetcar, bus and underground. We also purchased a pass for the ‘hop on hop off’ open top bus. It is a little confusing though as there are about six different companies competing for the privilege of taking tourist around their city and most of the buses look very similar, so just when you think it’s ‘your’ little red bus coming to pick you up it was usually one of the competitors!
We took the bus one day to see the
Golden Gate Bridge - we were going to walk over the bridge but my ‘balloon’ ankles would not have made it, however it was great to ride across and the weather was just perfect - even though a little windy. The iconic 1937 red/orange painted suspension bridge stood out against the bright blue sky. We continued from the bridge to the nearby resort of
Sausalito which reminded us of lovely seaside towns along the Garden Route in SA. Such a lovely area with wonderful restaurants alongside the roaring ocean - JT ‘eat your heart out’ but I think you have been here also………..
Later we joined the long queues to
travel on one of the famous San Francisco C
able Cars. The cable cars were introduced to the city in 1873 by Andrew Hallidie an Englishman who set out to solve the problem of horse drawn wagons having difficulty getting up the hills, having witnessed horses being killed as they stumbled down the steep slopes with laden loads. In the early years, there were cable car lines all over the 43 hills of the City taking the place of the horses and much safer. Now there are only three lines remaining, Powell-Mason, Powell-Hyde and California. These are the world's last permanently operational manually operated cable car system. These historical vehicles are not self-powered, rather they move using a mechanism that grips cables that run beneath San Francisco's streets. The cars cannot go backwards so the operators manually turn them around by hand on revolving platforms at each end of their terminus. and we watched this spectacle many times during our stay. When you walk along the streets you can hear this transport of a bygone age grumbling beneath your feet - the cars are pulled along by cables embedded just inches below in the street. If you cross the lines and
look down you can see the living cables moving between the narrow tracks………….
If you travel up the Powell-Hyde line you will cross amazing Lombard Street - known as the ‘crookedest street in the world’ because of its eight sharp turns down a 40 degree slope. The turns known as switchbacks were built in the 1920s to allow traffic to descend the steep incline. Nowadays the street zigzags around beautiful gardens and there are stairways on either side of the street for those on foot to transverse this alternative route made famous by Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo.
The cable cars only cover a very small area of the city - one other unique forms of transport are the
Heritage Streetcars which operate along Market Street and the Embarcadero and these too are an interesting alternative way of getting around the city.
We took one of these Streetcars to Pier 39, a renovated cargo pier with a level of shops and restaurants and home to the famous sea lions who make their home on wooden decks in the harbour. You could hear the animals as you entered
the Pier and there were literally hundreds of them all seeking a space to laze and frolic in the sun, although the males mainly enjoyed guarding their territory. We walked along to Pier 33 to get tickets to visit
Alcatraz the next day - as they usually sell out really quickly and have to be booked well in advance we were lucky to get them for the 1230 departure.
ALCATRAZ ISLAND - CALIFORNIA Alcatraz Island is located 1.5 miles offshore and is often referred to as "
The Rock", the small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, in 1868 a military prison and a federal prison from 1933 until 1963 when it closed.
Nowadays it is a major tourist attraction and has marvellous views of the city skyline. The crossing was quick and easy and before long we were walking up to the prison. A seabird colony of Western Gulls, Cormorants and Snowy Egrets have now made it their home and you could see and hear them as the boat docked by the old watch tower.
We had an excellent audio guide
which took us around the prison to the voices of people that were connected to the island, prison guards, inmates and even adults who had lived here as children each telling their story and thoughts on the time it was a prison. We saw many landmarks including, the Main Cellhouse, Dining Hall, Library, Lighthouse and the ruins of the Wardens House, you could still see the fireplace intact inside the ruins. We also walked around the Officer Club, Parade Ground and many other buildings surrounding the large prison itself.
During the 29 years it was in use as a prison, the jail held some of the most notorious criminals in American history such as
Al Capone, George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly and Alvin ‘Creepy’ Karpis who served more time at Alcatraz than any other inmate. It also provided housing for prison officers and their families and at one time over 60 children lived on the island travelling across to the mainland to school each day. The most well known inmate of course was
Robert Franklin Stroud known as the
‘Birdman of Alcatraz’, he was cited as one of the most notorious criminals in American history and
most people will think of him in the guise of Burt Lancaster…… Before the bird man came to Alcatraz he served time at Leavenworth Penitentiary and it was here after discovering a nest with three injured sparrows in the prison yard, that he began raising them, and within a few years had acquired a collection of some 300 canaries and became a respected ornithologist. Despite his nickname, he was not permitted to keep his birds at Alcatraz where he was incarcerated from 1942.
During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed that no prisoner successfully escaped. A total of 36 prisoners made 14 escape attempts, two men trying twice; 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape, two drowned, and five are listed as ‘missing and presumed drowned’ but a lot of people believe that they actually escaped to South America. The most violent occurred in 1946, when a failed escape attempt by six prisoners led to the Battle of Alcatraz with the loss of lives of guards and prisoners.
As we wandered around the grounds leading down to the sea the area was covered in
flowers and directly below the lighthouse, looking out over to the City was a huge carpet of brilliant pink flowers called
Persian Carpet. These flowers and many others were planted by families of the original Army post, and later by families of the prison guards. When the prison closed in 1963 the gardens fell into neglect. Now after 40 years they are being restored to their original state and on clearing the overgrowth, workers found that many of the original plants were growing where they had been planted – some more than 100 years ago. Numerous heirloom rose hybrids, including a Welsh rose that had been believed to be extinct, have been discovered and propagated. Many species of roses, succulents and geraniums were growing among apple and fig trees, banks of sweet peas, manicured gardens of cutting flowers, and wildly overgrown sections of native grasses with blackberry and honeysuckle as well as the lovely pink Persian Carpet mentioned above. The area had also developed into a nesting habitat and sanctuary for numerous birds - quite apt really. Whilst we were there we saw a huge colony of Cormorants as well as a group of
Snowy Egrets with young chicks.
These lovely wading birds related to the Heron were named after their elegant plumes and were hunted nearly to extinction in the 1800's for the feathers to adorn ladies hats........
We took the open top bus around San Francisco visiting many of the attractions without having to walk too far as my ankles were still not good. We visited Fisherman’s Wharf with waterfront views and the Maritime Museum which had several large interesting boats in the harbour including a Paddle Tug Boat called Eppleton Hall which originated in England and crossed the Atlantic under its own power in 1969. We also saw a Square Rigged Balclutha built in 1886 in Glasgow as well as a Scow Schooner called Alma built in 1891 in San Francisco. We walked along the sea front watching people paddling in the cold sea and a number of hardy locals were swimming out to boats and back to the shore with the Golden Gate Bridge shining in the background. Even though it was a warm day the water was extremely cold which was one of the reasons that no prisoners escaped Alcatraz, which was easily viewable from the city and did
indeed look quite easy to swim from.....................
All was peaceful now but following The
San Francisco earthquake of 1906 devastating fires broke out in the city and lasted for several days with the result that over
80%!o(MISSING)f San Francisco was completely destroyed. The earthquake and fires are remembered as one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the USA. Everywhere you travelled around the city you were reminded that life was very precarious and all new buildings were built to standards that would withstand another catastrophe.
On another
red bus tour we travelled around many
different districts of the city including Russian and Knob Hill, The Presido, Chinatown, with its multitude of pagodas and Dragon Gate entrance as well as neighbouring Japantown. There are many fine old buildings slotted in amongst the new builds and plentiful hotels and restaurants to tempt you off the streets when your legs get tired. The Civic Hall designed in 1915 to outclass Paris and Washington DC had a beautiful gold dome shining in the blue sky and was a magnificent building as well as the Museum of Fine Arts. The area
known as the Haight was nearby with its tightly packed Victorian houses in a variety of colours and designs each trying to outdo their neighbour with colour and taste. As we passed by on the top of the bus homeowners were waving or taking our photograph - probably fed up with us 'tourists' staring in at them!!!!
This area were very atmospheric and at the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets shop windows were full of vintage clothing as well as a multitude of book and record shops, on the pavements people were literally out 'painting the streets'.
.......Even legs appeared out of windows as we passed by - this legendary 1960’s intersection where even today anything goes the 'Summer of Love' truly does live on…….. today was Sunday and across the city demonstrations were taking place everywhere, people vocalising for many different causes thoughout the wider world, in nearby gardens children played, people danced and music played, mounted police chatted to locals and tourist alike and many ‘old’ hippies passed by with flowers in their hair…………..a powerful city full of life we could have stayed much longer and still only seen
a small fraction - but tomorrow we move on and head east to our first National Park,
Yosemite - see you there.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.661s; Tpl: 0.074s; cc: 26; qc: 103; dbt: 0.2354s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 2mb
jenny
non-member comment
Really enjoyed reading about San Fran we really enjoyed it there also, we stayed in Palo Alto with friends the first time and explored all you did, 6 yrs ago we also went to Yosemite driving from beautiful Lake Tahoe, seeing the wild flowers on the way th
Sorry I wrote in the wrong space, we drove through Nevada to Mono Lake, very interesting with tufa limestone towers we were amazed, its quite close to one of the outer entrances to Yose. There we saw the largest ribs ever at a cafe. Well worth a visit if you are able. Happy travels hope your ankles are improving I know how you feel.