8 August 2010 - San Francisco

San Francisco is an amazing place and we don't get anywhere near enough time here.

Today we started the day with breakfast at Sears Fine Food which is just across the road from the hotel. They've been open since 1938 and their specialty is pancakes - you get 18 of them on a plate with maple syrup and butter, and if you like, you get bacon or sausages as well. I couldn't face that much food - I had granola with fresh fruit and even then I couldn't get even half-way through the serve. The fruit was just beautiful. Paul had oatmeal with raisins and he managed to eat it all - just!

Then, back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and off to Alcatraz! This was a 'free' inclusion on the tour (although of course you've got to suspect that it was simply included in the price). Anyway, first you jump on a little ship (although not really tiny, it holds a couple of hundred people) and get taken across the bay. Then you get out at Alcatraz island where they give you a little talk before sending you off to look at everything. What we didn't realise was that today was the 75th anniversary of it opening as a prison - so they had all sorts of one-off talks and lectures from ex-staff and a couple of ex-prisoners too.

Going around the cell-blocks, they give you an audio device with recorded commentary so you really do get to understand what went on.

Overall, quite an interesting trip. For example, I hadn't realised that Alcatraz was a military base before it became a prison - at one point there were over 100 guns stationed on the island.

Then, after that, we went back to Fisherman's Wharf - we ended up spending about 4 hours there before coming back to the hotel. It was incredibly crowded, with so many choices of places to eat and things to see. One really interesting thing was a museum of all sorts of coin-operated stuff - from really old pianolas and moving dioramas to more modern pinball machines. It was simply fascinating. We also - of course - bought more souvenirs and I got the jumper I promised myself.

If we'd had more time, we could have gone through both an old submarine and a WWII Liberty Ship - the liberty ship was rescued and refurbished back in the 70's and still does cruises around the bay once every couple of months.

Fisherman's Wharf is only about 5 miles away from the hotel, but even on Sunday afternoon it took 40 minutes for the bus to get through the traffic and back to the hotel. I fell asleep and Paul let me snore on - he's in so much trouble :-)

Afterwards, we went out for another walk, this time to Chinatown which is just down the road and round the corner from here. All sorts of dodgy and not so dodgy stores - we spent quite a bit of time there too, and again, too much money.

After that huge breakfast and a big lunch at Fisherman's Wharf, we're just nibbling on a couple of bagels for dinner. American's just don't understand portion sizes at all!

Today's pictures are at Alcatraz, of course.