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.

San Francisco, day 1

This past weekend R and I took an extended long weekend to head to San Francisco. I've wanted to go there for a while - the rest of my family and a few friends have been and raved about what a cool place it was, and really, almost anywhere south of us has better weather than we do right now!

We woke up insanely early for a vacation (ready and out before 9am!) and were astounded with the gorgeous sun. It was warm too, like that first warm spring day where you can't decide if you need a sweater or not, but it's sunny so you try desperately to suck it up in a teeshirt.. definitely one of those days.

We started our San Francisco adventures by wandering through Chinatown.

Chinatown dressed up for Chinese New Year

Chinatown

The gates to Chinatown

From there, we wandered through town, looking for the cable car museum and Lombard Street. We were enjoying the weather and the opportunity to see a different city.

Union Square

A cable car! So picturesque

I think this symbolizes San Francisco quite well; hills, cute houses and a cable car.

We ended up wandering a lot further than we thought the first day, and decided to go see Coit Tower. I'm sure there's lots of interesting history behind it, but it's (in my opinion!) kind of an ugly building! The bottom floor is interesting because many artists have painted scenes from Californian life, which is kind of cool. We didn't end up paying the $7/person to go to the top.

Coit Tower

We eventually made it to Lombard Street, the self-proclaimed crookedest street in the world. I think it has 9 curves in one block. Kind of insane! It was pretty entertaining to watch people driving down taking photos and videos of themselves.. We chose to walk (way cheaper than renting a taxi, even for a block!).

Lombard St

That's the end of day 1. We did lots more, but that's enough to get an idea :)