San Francisco - day 2

Sunday was another gorgeous day (what more would you expect from California?!). We had booked tickets to Alcatraz for 10 am, so we decided to take the cable car assuming it would be less busy than other days. We missed one and ended up waiting for the third because every other car went where we wanted it to.

Cable car!

 When we first started exploring on Saturday we really thought people were joking about the hills. Where we started out, it was mostly flat with a little bit of slope. About half an hour later we understood..

Looking straight out from the cable car.

 Hilly.. yes. Just a little!!

We finally made it on the boat to Alcatraz, where we were rewarded with gorgeous views of the city.

San Francisco!

About 10 minutes later, we had a close up of Alcatraz.

Alcatraz. The penitentiary is at the top.

A tree!

With your ticket to Alcatraz comes an audio tour of the cells, which talked about some of the bigger events in the history of the penitentiary, as well as the layout and what all of the different functions of the rooms were. It was a good tour, aside from being with a ton of people and having it sort of back track to places where we'd already been once. Made for quite a few people standing in the hall, staring at a clock..

Cell in Alcatraz

San Francisco - complete with hills!

The view of the city from Alcatraz was gorgeous - tall buildings, hills... very pretty.

One of the wardens started gardening at Alcatraz, and many of the gardens still remain. There is (of course) a friends of the garden type of volunteer association. 

Geraniums, wire and the ocean (with Angel island in the background)

Flowers looking up (the hill..) at the penitentiary.

Alcatraz was a fairly interesting place, although the park rangers mentioned it's history aside from the penitentiary, there was not very many signs that really pointed it out. Obviously the history of the penitentiary with Al Capone, a few escapes and all that was way more interesting.

We spent the rest of Sunday wandering the east side of San Francisco and had a relaxing evening before heading for some awesome food.