This past weekend, me and my best friend Alana went on a trip to San Fran for my birthday! It was so much fun! We stayed in Fisherman's Wharf in a Holiday Inn Express thanks to my awesome brother who got us a free night! We arrived on Friday morning around eleven to the hotel, while checking in the front desk clerk asked us if we were sisters, we said no, and she says oh just best friends forever! And then told us about her best friend and that they get asked if their sisters too! It was really funny! After we checked in put our luggage down, we went out to walk around and eat lunch in Little Italy! We went to this restaurant called Panterei, it was really good, and reminded me of Italy for sure!
On our walk we spotted one of the infamous San Francisco Trolleys, we didn't actually get to ride them, oh well.
We walked through Chinatown to get to Union Square, Chinatown was so crowded, it was crazy it made me feel a little claustrophobic.
We made it to Union Square to shop at Macy's! It's one of their flagship stores so it was huge! 7 floors including a Cheesecake Factory at the top, and the men's department was across the street. After Macy's we were pretty tired, so we headed back to our hotel, and as we were taking a street car back to Fisherman's Wharf, we saw a bunch of occupy wallstreet protesters and unfortunately saw a naked man, a bus covered him up really quickly so I didn't really see anything but it was still pretty disturbing.
The next day we had booked a tour of Alcatraz at 10:30, so we made our way down to the Pier like an hour early just to be safe. Bought hot chocolate while we waited for our ferry's time. Mine had a shot of hazelnut in it and it was so delicious!
We got on our ferry around 10 AM, and I started taking pictures of San Francisco from the water. This is the Coit Tower.
Us on the ferry rocking our cool sunglasses, I had just bought mine the day before because I forgot mine had home.
San Francisco from the water.
The island of Alcatraz!
Our ferry took about fifteen minutes to get to the island, our tickets included a guided audio tour, right when we got on the island we were met under this sign by a park ranger and given a few rules of the island to follow. We started out watching a 20 minute video about how the island was found and the prison was put on it and what it has been since the prison closed in the late 60's.
The guided tour was pretty cool and super informative, however it was a little creepy because everyone had headsets on and weren't talking, so when there was a pause in the tour, it was completely silent. This picture is of the most famous prisoners they had on the island, including Al Capone and Robert "Birdman" Stroud.
One of the cell block streets, there were three floors of cells. The prison was never full to it's capacity over the years, and ended up closing due to costs to maintain it.
These were the Wardens of the Prison. The tour said that most of the myths about Alcatraz are false and it wasn't as bad as Hollywood made it out to be. However, there were eight murders and five suicides on the island, and about 3 major escape attempts.
Their is only one prisoner still imprisoned today that was in Alcatraz, the rest either died, or got out of prison. After the tour we had to wait about 10 minutes for the ferry to come to take us back to San Francisco.
When we got back we walked around Fisherman's Wharf for awhile, saw this sign..Forrest Gump anyone?
Got to see a magic show, they were filming this for America's Got Talent. We ate lunch at the Crab House, the service took FOREVER! Alana got crab and I got salmon, the salmon was really good but not worth the wait.
After lunch we walked up STEEP streets to get to Lombard Street. The Crooked Street in the U.S.! That street is so crazy! Cars go like 20 miles an hour down this street.
I walked down the street to get some good pictures of it! You can't really tell how crooked it is in the pictures but it's amazing in real life.
Had a random German woman take my picture at the bottom and then had to walk back up it to catch a bus to go to the Painted Ladies
We took a bus for like 20 blocks and then had to walk for about 10 to get to these! But they are so dang cute it was worth it! This whole neighborhood was adorable, but these are the famous Painted Ladies.
This was across the street from the Painted Ladies, a lot of people still had their Halloween decorations up, so this house had a huge Thriller Michael Jackson in their window. It was pretty cool looking.
At the bus stop waiting to go back to downtown, was where the symphony building (pictured), opera house and city hall were. When we got back to Fisherman's Wharf we ate dinner at Boudin Bakery, I highly recommend this place! It is so delicious! It's a french bakery and they incorporate their awesome sourdough bread into every appetizer, entree, and dessert! And they also had some of the best scalloped potatoes I have ever had!
The next day we didn't really have a lot planned, I knew I wanted to see the Golden Gate bridge, and we had been seeing these bad boy Go Cars all over town, so we decided to rent one. It is GPS guided to it tells you where to go to see all the sights. It took us down Fisherman's Wharf, down the marina, where we had to take a detour because their was a marathon going on, so it yelled at us telling us we went the wrong way. We headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge viewpoint and we stopped here because it said the street was closed. And some lady walking by told us how cute we were and offered to take our picture in the Go Car.
We made it to the viewpoint and I took pictures of the bridge! It's so big! It was awesome, unfortunately we couldn't drive across it because our Go Car maxes out at 35 mph and the bridge's speed limit is much faster than that. Also it doesn't reverse, we got in a couple situations where I had to get out and push the car back.
On our way to and from the bridge we saw these cute little houses.
We made a slight detour and stopped to look at the Palace of Fine Arts which is gorgeous!
We then decided to head for Lombard Street and our GPS lady took us through two really cute neighborhoods, where apparently all the young people live, work, and shop.
We made it to Lombard Street and drove down it! It was so much fun and somewhat terrifying at the same time! The street is steep!
This is us at the end of the street! We made it!
We spent the rest of the afternoon at Fisherman's Wharf, bought purses from an extremely aggressive Asian woman, who asked us if we were sisters. Stopped by Boudin Bakery again, this display is in their window, Turtle shaped sourdough bread. I tried Clam Chowder for the first time, it was better than I thought it would be but not good enough where I will buy it again. A homeless lady asked me for it so I gave it to her.
Hung out on Pier 39 again, saw the Sea Lions that hang around there. Shopped and ate lunch at Wipeout, I do not recommend this place it was gross, but we had a coupon.
We made our way to Ghiradelli Square for some Hot Chocolate, saw this homeless man, he hides behind the bush and then jumps out and scares people.
Went to Ghiradelli Square for some free peppermint bark which was amazing! And got some awesome pumpkin spice hot chocolate!
We sat on a bench and drank our hot chocolate facing the water, it was a relaxing afternoon. That night for dinner we went back to Boudin Bakery because it was so good! I got their apple pie for dessert which the crust is made out of sourdough bread of course! Some of the best apple pie I have ever had! All in all it was a really fun trip! I am glad that Alana loves this city and wanted to go again! It was a lot of fun filled with sightseeing, homeless people talking to us, and eating way too much!
