San Francisco, California
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Tue 21 Aug 2012 23:18
According to Mark Twain, "the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco", and this was certainly our experience! When we arrived on Wednesday at about noon, it was a chilly albeit sunny 16 degrees. By the time the girls had arrived at about 6pm, and we had got ready to go our for dinner in China Town, the temperature was definitely cooler. China Town in San Francisco, is much like China Town anywhere else except it is much bigger, it is the largest China Town outside of China. The main reason for this is that when the Chinese first arrived in San Francisco, and until fairly recently, about 50-60 years ago, this was the only place they were allowed to live. A new China Town has now developed closer to the wharf area, where a lot of the younger Chinese people live.
As we had only one full day this time, and we are coming back to San Francisco at the end of the trip for another short stay as we are all flying out from here, we decided to do a city tour first to get a 'feel' for the place. Fortunately for us, we had taken the hotel concierge's suggestion as to which tour group to use, the one with a covered coach rather than an open top bus, as we woke up to a cold, foggy, damp day.
The first stop on the tour was the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, well that is where the tour guide told us we were - it was hard to tell through the fog! After that we continued through the park area of town and out towards the old hippy enclave of Haight and Ashbury. This area was relatively quiet as we arrived in the morning, it doesn't really get going properly until the afternoon and can be very interesting at night! Whilst in this area we saw the house used by The Grateful Dead, an old rock group, I am reliably informed by John! Obviously, before my time!!
By the time we had finished the tour, the sun was starting to break through, which was a good job as in the afternoon we were headed out to that other famous San Francisco landmark, Alcatraz Island, home of the infamous prison. The wind was still quite blowy, the ride over was definitely chilly and it was really cold once we arrived there. Alcatraz Island is a bleak and unwelcoming place, even in the summer, so goodness knows what it must have been like arriving there as a prisoner in the winter. That said some of the guards and their families actually lived on the Island, which also can't have been an altogether pleasant experience. The main part of the visit here is the cell block tour which takes about an hour. It tells stories of the famous inmates such as Al Capone, and Robert 'The Birdman' Stroud, both of whom have been immortalised on the silver screen. The attempted escape in 1962, a year before the prison closed, was also made into a film. The chosen method of escape, for those of you who haven't seen the film, involved the prisoners digging their way out by widening the air vents in the cells with spoons. They then climbed into the service shaft and escaped off the island on a raft fashioned out of a raincoat. It is said that after the attempt, officers found 30 spoon sharpened metal spoon handles. The digging took over a year, but when you look at the size of the cells, and realise that these guys were locked up for about 23 hours a day, they had plenty of time on their hands.
After this we headed to Pier 39 for a bit of modern American culture. This is a fairly new development on Fisherman's Wharf and is full of fish and chip style restaurants, and souvenir shops, a bit like Blackpool actually! Our next stop tomorrow will be Yosemite National Park, where we have booked a log cabin for 3 days.