Chapter 3 – San Francisco

We arrive at our backpackers in downtown SF just off Union Square at the end of a day of driving and unwittingly hit San Fran gold! A free carpark right outside of our hostel. As this joke illustrates -  a car park can be hard to find here :

Chinatown

Painted Ladies

“ A man is walking down a street in San Fran and sees a guy lying in a carpark. Curious he walks up and asks “ Excuse me, what are you doing?” The man on the street replies “ I’m saving this carpark while my wife goes to buy a car” ! ”. (David) 

Halfway across Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco is a great city and we enjoy many amazing eateries and endure (at times enjoying) many touristy things. We cycle the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and go see Fisherman’s Wharf; where instead of the local marine fare we end up having amazing American cheeseburgers (no less than those served at this years Oscars). We venture into the reputedly dangerous Tenderloin at night for a great Vietnamese Pho amongst the drug addicts, dealers and homeless people (maybe not your usual touristy attraction). We have a great matzo ball soup in a Jewish diner on Pesach and visit the Jewish Contemporary Museum.

Never know what you'll find when you look up!

A great highlight of our time in San Francisco was meeting and being shown around by David, a family friend. We saw parts of the city we would have completely missed otherwise and learnt more about the history of the city and how much it had changed in the last 50 years in that evening then we had the whole week. Dinner that evening in Chinatown still stands as the best dinner we’ve had so far! 

On our last day we head out to Alcatraz along with hundreds of other people. Alcatraz is legendary and its easy to see why. Named by the Spanish for the pelicans that call it home, Alcatraz started off life as a fort protecting the harbour. It continued in this role through the Civil War which is when it started to be used as a prison. At one point it was one of the most famous prisons in the USA, with such notorious criminals as Al Capone serving time there. It was also the only prison in the US at the time that provided hot showers to the inmates. This was to prevent successful escape attempts by making sure that the prisoners didn't get accustomed to the cold water surrounding the island. After it was closed it was the site of a 18 month occupation by Native American activists in the '60s before becoming the tourist attraction that it is today.

Alcatra - nobody ever escaped alive

Isolation cell 

We were sorry to leave SF but we were happy to be on our way to one of my (Andre's) favourite places in the world : Yosemite National Park!