First Day In San Francisco

9 October 2014

Weather:- Very cold 24C and a little foggy at final destination

Justin and I drove six hours north to San Francisco stopping to have lunch at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen on the way.  Popeyes is a lot like KFC as we know it here in Australia.  They batter their chicken Louisiana style and you can choose sides such as French fries, coleslaw, corn on the cob, beans, rice and green beans.  We accessed San Francisco via the Oakland Bay Bridge and arrived at 3:00 pm.

Road from Los Angeles to San Francisco

We were booked into Da Vinci Villa and luckily, they had a room ready for us which was an upgrade to a two bedroom room and a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

View from our room at Da Vinci Villa

The main bedroom and living space
in our room at the Da Vinci Villa

We relaxed in our room for a while before walking down to Fisherman’s Wharf where we saw bread rolls in the shape of animals at Boudin Bakery.  This is where we decided to have dinner, Justin had the Clam Chowder while I had half a toasted cheese sandwich because it was a special deal.

Alligator bread roll at Boudin Bakery 

After dinner, we walked around to Pier 33 arriving thirty minutes before the pre-arrival time for the tour.  We were told to come back later, Justin had a headache so we went to the Alcatraz Landing Tour Café, where Justin rested and I looked in the gift shop.  It was five minutes before the arrival time so we joined the queue outside for the ferry crossing and froze our arses off.  It was windy and very cold and we were in the queue for twenty minutes before they took our photos and we could board the ferry.  Note wear gloves, scarves and beanies.  Actually, a waterproof jacket would have helped as well to try to stop the wind from going through your clothes.

On arriving at Alcatraz, we were guided by a National Parks staffer to the prison cells and were told about the areas which we can access.  Our choices were the audio guided tour of the cell house, see Cell Block A, the workshop and the hospital.  The last three options were not normally open to the public but they were open as a Japanese artist was showing his works in these areas.  We did the audio tour and joined a ranger in the library to hear about the escape of Alcatraz (1962), followed by the cell door opening and closing demonstration.  By then we were out of time and had to get the last ferry back to San Francisco which left at 9:25 pm.

Alcatraz from the ferry

Cell door opening and closing demonstration

From Pier 33 we retraced our route back to the Da Vinci Villa, followed by doing our washing as I had to resort to wearing my bikini as under wear.  This meant we didn’t get to bed until after midnight.