DAY TWENTY
This was to be our only full day devoted to sightseeing in San Francisco so we did our best to make the most of it — starting with a morning tour around all the most beautiful sights in the city.
Even better, our tour wasn’t with a formal tour company but with our hosts in the back of their 1978 VW Beetle Convertible!
Here is our lovely host Ken who provided us with a wealth of information on San Francisco while his partner Richard drove us to loads of great locations.
We visited everywhere from Ghirardelli Square to the Twin Peaks viewing point which gives amazing views of the Bay Area. We also indulged in the classic SF tourist activity — taking a photo beside the Golden Gate Bridge.
We then spent the afternoon visiting Alcatraz Island — home to the notorious federal penitentiary that housed infamous criminals such as Al Capone and Robert Stroud in the mid 20th century, and was also shooting location for loads of films including Escape from Alcatraz (1979) and The Rock (1996).
Often voted as the best tourist attraction in San Francisco, Alcatraz has a really great audio tour and we learned a lot about the various escape attempts. Cai wasn’t initially too excited by the concept (“why would I want to spend the day walking around inside a prison?”) but was ultimately won over by the quality of the tour.
We then toured around the island itself. From the ruined buildings to the various flower gardens, it was a surprisingly picturesque walk and offered impressive views of the city.
Our only complaint is that we would have liked more information on the Native American occupation when activists took over the island in order to protest federal policies related to American Indians. The audio tour of the prison was pretty great but it would have been even more interesting to learn more about what happened during the occupation — a period that was immortalized in the graffiti on the water tower, “Peace and Freedom. Welcome. Home of the Free Indian Land.”
