Welcome to The Rock!

Day: 5
States: CA
Location: San Francisco, CA - Embarcedero, Pier 33, The Rock (Alcatraz), Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown
Total Miles Travelled: 489M

Now we’re getting a little excited – some places I’ve always wanted to visit awaits us – The Rock and the Golden Gate Bridge.

So, an early start for us as I booked the early tickets for Alcatraz to ensure that we got some space on the island as up to 5000 people occupy the island at any one time! We got ourselves all up together nice and early and got the 7:32 BART to the Embarcedero again. We quickly stomped to Pier 33 where our ferry to The Rock awaited. We all queued up and got our picture taken by a polite NPS ranger who unfortunately could have easily been replaced with a tape recording placed on repeat.

We got on our 10 minute ferry and straightaway got some refreshments (you can’t eat or drink anywhere except on the dock on Alcatraz). I got a coffee and the most dense piece of chocolate brownie ever – it lasted me nearly half a day!

We arrived at the island and after a talk from a park ranger we were allowed to roam the island freely! We took a stomp around the various parts including guardhouses, power station, water tower, lighthouse and obviously the cell block where we could check out life as a inmate of the super-max prison, including Al Capones own cell. This was all accompanied by an audio tour from 4 of the guards and 4 inmates which guided you round the cell block and took you through the various attempts at escape while guiding you through these particular areas. Quite a lot of the place already seemed familiar having seen The Rock with Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery – a nice park ranger lady was kind enough to point out where various filming spots were.

  

A fantastic experience that used up nearly 2/3rds of daylight so it was now time for a spot on lunch and off exploring again. As we were so close to pier 39 we decided to go there to grab some stereotypical San Francisco Clam Chouder in a bread bowl – lush!

Now off to major sight 2 – the Golden Gate Bridge. We thought about going to see this via bike (an electric bike to be precise) but as it cost the same to hire one of these as hiring the Mustang we decided to give that a miss. Now we would discover the nighmare of getting around San Francisco by bus and the difficulty in finding the bus stops in some places. We took a walk to find the nearest bus stop that would take us across the Golden Gate which took an age in itself. When we found one the map seemed to indicate that 28, 29 and GG buses all went across the bridge so we hopped on the next 28 that came along. Roughly 10 mins later we could see our goal approaching and the anticipation rose! We arrived at the toll boothes of the Golden Gate Bridge where we thought we’d be crossing the bridge however the bus turned around here – FAIL!!

The next stop on the bus was about 1 mile to the south west of the bridge – damn it! We decided to stomp towards the bridge rather than get another bus – we didn’t have the change anyway and although it only costs $2 for any bus ride in San Francisco, they don’t give any change in order to keep up efficiency. Turns out it didn’t matter as if we hadn’t had come this way we would have missed out on this awesome vantage point!

So, both sights out of the way left us with our last evening in SF so we headed off on the bus back towards the BART line and we got off just after Chinatown. Chinatown had already closed shop pretty much completely so we headed towards the BART line towards all the lights and found a few nice places to eat. We stopped at the one that looked the nicest and did some decent food – I had a seafood Quesildella which was insanely hot due to the massive amounts of chilli in it – I had to chicken out and take some of these out as it was burning my face off to the enjoyment of my so called friends!

It was time to hit the BART again and get back to the RV for our final night sleep in San Francisco.