I'm writing this while we're sitting in our rental car driving from San Francisco to our next stop in Seaside which is somewhere near Monterey. It's getting dark now so I can concentrate on typing up this blogpost without having to worry about missing the spectacular view.
Today was another great day. We started early again (only about 3 hours of sleep for me, I really need to catch up on sleep tonight!) because we had tickets to the 9:10 am ferry to Alcatraz. It was still foggy but we had a nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge (which of course was covered by the fog as well).
As we arrived at "The Rock" we took the jailhouse audio tour which was very well done. It was narrated by former prisoners and staff members who talked about their life in the island. Many of the staff members actually lived there with their families. I didn't know about that before but there were lots of children living on Alcatraz who went to school in San Francisco by boat every day. They hardly ever saw anything of the prisoners and lead a pretty good life there.
The life of the prisoners wasn't good at all, the cells are really small and apart from a small bed, a toilet and a small table whih was attached to the wall there was nothing at all. They were allowed to have a few private belongings but apart from that there wasn't much of a distraction for them. Many of them even learnt crocheting simply to have something to do.
After that we took the ferry back to Pier 33 and walked to Fishermen's Wharf which was a bit of a disappointment. Everyone knows about the sea lions there, they're supposed to be always there and these days there are none at all! Our host told us that it only happens once in a blue moon that all of them are gone but unfortunately it has happened now. Well, we saw one when we were in Sausalito yesterday but still I would've loved to see them at the pier today. Without the sea lions Fisherman's Wharf isn't that spectacular, lots of tourists shopping and having food at the shopping mall there.
Our walk led us on to a Cable Car stop and for a while not much more happened. Not sure if im right but to me it seemed like the staff had all the time in the world. They were chatting, typing on their phones and one was actually dozing in a chair. Every 15 minutes or so one of them decided to get going and one of the Cable Cars left. In my next life I'll become a Cable Car driver... We had to wait for about an hour but once the journey had begun it was a fun ride that we both enjoyed immensely. Despite lots of security regulations everywhere it's still allowed to ride the cars holding on to the rails on the outside which of course we did! I can only recommend to ride the Cable Cars at least once, it's very touristy but also a great experience. And there's even a way around waiting in line for ages. You simply have to buy a ticket, take a short walk and hen board the train at the second stop! They'll let you on and there's no queue!
We didn't do much afterwards, only picked up our rental car and then started the first leg of our journey down the coast. We made a short stop to enjoy the spectacular view of the Pacific and now have almost reached our destination. We are both really tired so more tomorrow.
And a short addition, the room we booked for the next two nights is rather dirty and not nice at all, yuk! But we paid for it so we don't have a choice...
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