Up at 7:00 .. and out the door at 7:30 .. in line waiting for the last few walk up tickets for the trip to Alcatraz. I have to admit, being mobile so early in the morning is a pretty cool thing.
So after an hour and 15 minute wait in line we secured 2 tickets for the 10:30 boat to The Rock .. yeah!
After the 12 minute ride to the island we got off the boat and begun our tour. The trip to the top was equal to a 10 storey climb (glute work out number one for the day). I was surprised to see how run down everything was .. a lot of the concrete was crumbling away .. metal rebar exposed and rusted quite bad ... as it turns out that was the major reason why Alcatraz was shut down, the maintenance costs associated with keeping it running was very high. However, the areas that were open were very interesting - the best part was a narrated audio tour that was excellent!! (yes, two exclamation marks). We were given a little iPod like device and headphones that had a mix of actual guards and inmates giving a tour through the jail. After close to 3 hours we jumped on a boat and made our own escape.
Back on land we made tracks about 10 blocks to the real cable cars ... for 5$ you can ride in one as far as you want ... we wanted to go up the hill to the top of the curvy road ... whats the curvey road? It is a steep section of road that for one block weaves its way down .. cars lined up for blocks to give it a go. Anyhow, we quickly found out the line to get on a car was about 40 minutes long .. so we decided to walk up to the top .. a 5 block hike .. glute workout # 2.
Once we made it to the top we took a few pictures and walked on down .. car after car winded their way to the bottom .. looked like fun, but this was one experience we did on foot.
We slowly made our way back to the hotel and picked up the car ... on the way we got a good laugh as one of the street performers had himself a set of bushes he put up in front of him .. and he would wait for unsuspecting paserby's and give them a good scare .. it was priceless.
After a few chuckles we did get the car and made a trek to the top of Coit tower .. long story short, some rich lady donated a bunch of her money to build this tower after the earthquake of 1906.
After the ride to the top of the 21 storey tower, we made one last random trip a la deek through the heart of San Francisco .. I had a cabbie follow me for about 6 blocks and the guy would honk at me at every light .. I would give a friendly wave as if saying "Hi, how you doing" ... I hope this pissed him off, but I guess I'll never know.
We are now on our Los Angeles leg of the trip, which included a quick zip through Santa Cruz .. which looked very busy .. being a Friday and all probably not the best day to try and see it without a million people.
Anyhow, its late .. gotta sleep!
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