San Francisco, California, United States
Thursday, October 30, 2008
I had said to myself it would be an early start today but I woke up to more fog and so I didn't rush around and took my time and had breakfast with Maria, who was one of my roomies, but even so I was out soon after 9am and today it was going to be cable car day. I went down to Powell Station and got my MUNI passport to help get me round the city (it gets you on the buses, subway, cable cars and BART trains). Then I had to find out which line and I took the Powell-Mason line all the way up to Fisherman's Wharf (more of that later) - cable car rides are a must if you come here, I love them and the cable car conductors are really friendly and helpful. A 10 minute walk down to Pier 33 and I found that I could get the next ferry out to Alcatraz at 10.30, and although you could barely see Alcatraz at this point because of the fog (and it's only a mile off the mainland) I could feel the sun was trying to burn off the fog so I was hopeful for some better photos later on. You begin with your visit with a 20 minute film taking you through the island's history beginning as a military fort, then military prison, then in 1934 it became the maximum-security federal pentientiary it became famous for and after it closed in 1963, six years later it was to have a very different purpose, being the symbol of Native American protest for Native American land rights, when a group of Native Americans occupied Alcatraz for 18 months. It is an incredibly interesting and haunting place, made more so by it's state of gentle, crumbling decay. To see the cells where inmates of the famous 1946 'Battle of Alcatraz' held and then shot 5 prison officers and then to see where the grenades fell when the authorities launched an offensive to re-take the prison, and then as I asked to, to spend even a minute shut in the dark in the solitary confinement cells, where inmates were sometimes held for up to three weeks is an extremely disquieting experience; I didn't feel as if I could move the dark was so complete, it sort of had the effect of shutting my mind down as well as my body. I'm not normally a fan of them but it is one place where I would recommend doing the audio guide, as you hear the voices of inmates and officers in what is a really effective oral history tour. In all I spent about three hours there, as when I came out the sun had more or less broken the fog and there were more photo opportunities to be had. I returned to the mainland and went in search of lunch as I was pretty hungry by now. I ended up at Pier 39 and had lunch at Swiss Louis', a lot of seafood done with an Italian twist, where I sampled the compulsory clam chowder. And from there saw the most amazing hi-tech tall ship if that isn't an oxymoron, (you'll see what I mean when my photos finally go up!) and also I could see and hear the infamous Bay sea lions from the restaurant. After that it was browse time around Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf, with a stop in the famous Boudin bakery along the way where they bake the San Francisco sourdough. I wandered all along the Wharf, past the Cannery and the Marine Museum which I didn't have time to really walk around and then walked all the way up to Ghiradelli Square; it used to be the home of the famous chocolate and ice cream factory but now it is a smartened-up up square of residential and boutique shops, although there are still three Ghiradelli shops if you want to sample their wares. After that it was another short cable car ride to Lombard Street, this is an extremely steep street and to prevent cars speeding down them they created a zig-zag circuit down the street and then inter-planted it with flowers and shrubs so it looks more like a strange urban park than a road. After walking down and then up it again, it was another cable car back home, this time on Powell and Hyde and finally toddled back to the hostel and collapsed!
