I've been up, I've been down, I've been so
damn lost since you're not around. I've been reggae and calypso, won't you save
me San Francisco?
-
Train
Today was one of those days were it’s a
pleasure to be alive. After one of the coolest starts in San Francisco history,
it became a clear and sunny day with endless visibility and we made the most of
the great conditions for one of the most active days of the trip.
We started with breakfast at a diner down the road from the hotel – the old-school kind that you see in so many American movies – caught the cable car down to Fisherman’s Wharf and walked to the Ferry Terminal, where tours for Alcatraz leave from. It’s hard to do justice to just how nice a day it was, but the pictures should give you some sort of idea. We got a day with sunshine, cool temperatures and barely a breeze of which to speak. Perfect.
Our first round of exercise came at
Alcatraz, where the ferry docks on the far side of the infamous penitentiary
facility (now a national park), which requires a long walk of switchbacks to
get to the main cell block, at the highest point of the island, where the views
of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay are breathtaking. We did an audio tour
of the cell blocks, which is an interesting way to learn about some of the
people and events that made The Rock such a famous prison.
Alcatraz is home, of course, to some pretty big-time criminals, like Al Capone
and the Birdman of Alcatraz, but that’s only half the story of this windswept island. Through the tour,
you get to hear about escapes, attempted escapes, inmate riots and how there
was a little community of guards and other personnel who lived quite happily,
some with children, on the island. It was a pretty safe place, with the scum
and scourge of America locked up in such high-security environs. Later in life, Alcatraz was home to an ongoing
protest for equality by American Indians, and is now a National Park, staffed
by rangers and historians from the National Parks Service.
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| Looking up to the main cell block |
The Rock is definitely a fascinating place
to visit, if not a little creepy at times when various elements of prison life
are touched on – there’s so much history there, and the history of the
once-federal penitentiary is tied to the shifts that America has taken over the
years. We spent the best part of three hours there before heading back to the
city, to a seafood restaurant at Pier 39 for lunch. I had clam chowder in a
sourdough bowl and a nice salad. We shared an entrée of crab cakes, which were
really, really good. The seafood is as good here as it is anywhere else in
America.
After lunch, we rented bikes and commenced
a good 30km of riding. First, we rode down to AT&T Park, home of the San
Francisco Giants (Major League Baseball) under the Bay Bridge, then circled
around and went up to Golden Gate Bridge, across the span on the western
(ocean) side and down to the small village Sausalito, catching the ferry back
to the city after dark.
It’s impossible to accurately describe how
amazing it is to be on a bike with the wind biting at your cheeks on a perfect
winter afternoon as the sun is setting over the Pacific Ocean. The city is at
your back all the way up, and the bridge gets bigger and bigger, catching the
late afternoon sun, a glimpse of the open expanse of the Pacific Ocean beyond.
It’s a beautiful sight at the best of times, but when you get to experience it
at sundown, it’s something else entirely. It’s mesmerising.
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| The San Francisco skyline from Alcatraz |
An excellent day topped off with dinner at
an awesome pizza restaurant just up the road from the hotel. We’ll sleep well
tonight, which is just as well because we have an early start in the morning.
We’re leaving San Francisco and driving into the Sierra Nevada Mountains to one
of my favourite places on earth, Yosemite National Park, where snow is in the
forecast!
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| Golden Gate Bridge at sunset |
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