Monday, 8 December 2008

I Left My Heart In San Francisco.....

Well it's (finally!) time for the last episode of our America journey, only about 4 months after we got back! Our final destination was San Francisco. We only had a few days before we had to return home but, as ever, we endeavoured to pack as much in as we could!

We started off at Pier 39 were there was lots of exciting shops and restaurants, not to mention the odd one or two hundred seals. You can hear them long before you see them and they just spend their day lounging round the place, making a racket! Quite a sight to behold!

From the next pier along, we got the ferry for our night tour of Alcatraz Prison. This was amazing and really quite scary once it had got dark! We were supplied with a very informative audio tour which told us all about Al Capone, the Birdman and the only three people ever to escape from the Rock. Slightly disturbing was the fact that we were on the last boat off the Island at about 10pm, but nobody seemed to be counting people on and off! I thought it might be fun to rough it overnight but Clare had other ideas!

We couldn't leave San Francisco without checking out some of the famous hills. We'd heard they were steep but we hadn't realised the half of it! But there was 3 weeks of American food to burn off and we felt we needed the exercise so we gave it everything we had!

When we reached the top of the mountain...sorry! hill... by a complete stroke of luck we managed to bump into the old tram service that took us all the way back down again and into town. When they told us they had two spaces left, we thought we were in luck... We didn't realise that those two spaces were hanging on for dear life on the outside of the train.

I think a fitting end to the holiday is to leave you with two video clips of the experience!





All the pictures, and some more crazy videos, can be found here.

Well, thanks for sticking through this rather protracted account of our holiday! I guess I'll have to think of something else exciting for next time.

4 comments:

Sarah said...

I've been to San Fran and loved it...infact Alcatraz was my favorite part. I'm glad you guys were able to see it! It is a pretty amazing place. I hope to go back one day but I do think you are crazy for wanting to rough it for a night :) I would have been on that boat with Claire :) Glad to see you both had such a great time on your trip to the U.S.

Candi and Skeet said...

Thank you so much for sharing! It looks like you had a blast! I love San Fran but I never got to ride a trolley so I am incredibly jealous! You mentioned when you first started posting a couple of "near-death" experiences. Did I miss those?

Miss you!!

Anonymous said...

The seals were my favorite part of San Fran! (lame, I know) Levi got so irritated with me because I just wanted to stand there for hours. And, Candi--we never rode the trolley either. We're so ditsy, we didn't even think of it until we got home and realized it's a pretty big deal. Now we just laugh about it.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the info. I've always wanted to visit San Fran and now I know what sites to check out. Looks like you had a great time in the good 'ol USA!