Hey Friends!!

How are you doing this morning? I hope you had a wonderful weekend. I got home yesterday morning at about 7am after a flight and car ride that I slept solidly throughout. To get myself back on to Eastern time, I decided not to crawl into bed but to unpack and do laundry instead. I don’t know about you, but looking at a suitcase full of dirty laundry (including some very stinky workout gear) really irks me.

Anyways, enough about laundry and luggage. I’ve got TONS of photos to share with you from my trip and since there are so many, I’ll be breaking my San Francisco recap down into 2 posts – today you’ll see the fun, and tomorrow will be the food. The conference I was at ran from Wednesday to Friday, so our big day for sightseeing was Saturday. My co-worker Greg and I crammed as much as we could in, and I’m not sure how many miles we covered on foot but it was enough to make me pass out cold on the plane! Here we go….

The morning began at Pier 33, which is where the ferries to Alcatraz are docked. Prior to the trip, the only thing I knew about Alcatraz was that it was a prison on an island, but that soon changed. I’d been warned by friends that have done the trip before that things get really windy on the ferry, so you’ll notice I’ve got several layers on which were shed as the afternoon went on. This was by far the warmest day of the entire trip, and not a good one to have forgotten sunglasses like I did!

We took the boat over (about a 15 minute ride) with a bunch of other tourists, and once we docked, we headed inside the prison for a guided audio tour.

A typical cell

Via headsets, we were shown the entire prison, including the various cell blocks, the recreation area, dining hall, showers, morgue (ewww), guards’ quarters, and visitation area. We were also told about how a couple of the prisoners dug their way through the cell walls with spoon handles and escaped. The narrators of the tour are actual prison guards and prisoners, so it felt very realistic.

In "The Hole", where the really unruly, isolated prisoners went.

Alcatraz is only about 1.4 miles from San Francisco, and the view of the city from the island is pretty amazing. If I were a prisoner at the time, I can see how it would have been very tempting to try and escape for a swim to the mainland!

The second item on our Saturday agenda was a food-related one, so I’ll save that for tomorrow. However, we didn’t stop there. Next it was up to Pier 39 to see the Fisherman’s Wharf, and the docks full of seals that we’d been told so much about by other people at the conference.

Before we managed to find any seals, we walked through a ton of shops and restaurants. It was really busy (probably because it was Saturday and the weather was gorgeous), but eventually…..

San Francisco Hard Rock Cafe

Beer 39 on Pier 39

… we found a clue!

Within a short walk, we found them.

After ticking the “find docks with lots of seals” box off the list, we had one more stop to make. It was a bit of a hike up and down San Francisco’s super hilly roads (and I’m not joking – they have steps, not sidewalks, and cars park perpendicular to the curb instead of parallel, like this) so we hopped in a taxi. The driver kindly took us to Broderick street, which is where I saw what might have been the highlight of my entire trip. Do you recognize this house?

Try to ignore the Halloween decor. And picture an orange-y-brown door. How about now?

It’s the Full House house!!! This was my all-time favourite show as a kid (after I grew out of Sesame Street) and I never missed an episode. As far as I was concerned, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen were my best friends and Danny Tanner was a dad with a squeaky-clean sense of humour (which is definitely not the case for the actor behind the character!) Apparently the door on the house was sold to a neighbour, so the dark one in the photo above is not the original one that you’d see in the end of the Full House opening credits. Nevertheless, I was in awe.

After making Greg take a squillion photos of me standing in front (not on the steps, because I was being respectful of the people that actually live there – whom unfortunately do not include the Olsen twins and John Stamos), we headed back to the hotel for one last wonderful San Francisco meal….. but you’ll hear more about that tomorrow!!

Now I want to know:

  • Have you ever been to Alcatraz?
  • What was your favourite childhood TV show?
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