But never, in all of LWOW, have my legs been as sore as they
are after walking around San Francisco yesterday! The hills, oh my, the hills! But, I’m getting ahead of myself….
ALCATRAZ
Backing up to yesterday morning, we woke up early and left
at 9:00 am in order to make boarding for our 11:00 am Alcatraz ferry. According to the maps, it should have taken
us just over an hour to get there from our camp. HOWEVER…. We hit horrible traffic on our way
into town (which we thought we had allotted time for) and it seems that
everybody in the Bay area was trying to get to Pier 33 at the same time we
were. I sent an SOS “please pray!” text
to my family because it appeared that we weren’t going to be able to make our
ferry which would’ve TOTALLY stunk because this ferry books up a few weeks in
advance. So, yes, while there are
ferries leaving every 30 minutes from Pier 33, our tickets would only have
worked at 11:00 am. There was a sign at
the ticket booth saying that the next available ferry tickets were not until
July 31. And these were pricey tickets
(about $30/each), let me tell you, so missing out wasn’t really an option!
You could feel the stress in the van as we snapped at the
kids to “be quiet!” so we could read the maps and re-route ourselves a
different back-street sort of way. It
was 10:45 when we finally made it to the pier, but then we needed to park and
then run (RUN!) to the ferry. Technically,
we were supposed to “check in” by 10:30 to confirm that we showed up, but we
had pre-printed our tickets and were hopeful that if we just got in the
boarding line, they would let us on.
At 10:50 we found a “public parking” garage and opted to do
Valet Parking since we didn’t have time to mess with driving up 8 levels of
parking behind the slowest driver in California who we’d been following for a
few blocks. I was sick to my stomach to
think of what Valet was going to cost us for a full day in SF…..but that was
our best option at that point.
10:53: the 5 of us
sprinted out of the garage and ran harem-skarem, jay-walking (jay-running, is more
like it) across about 6 lanes of downtown San Fran traffic and barely, just
BARELY made it to boarding!
 |
| Check out the clock! We cut it so close |
On the boat, we discovered how windy and cold it is on the
bay. The ferry ride took about 15 minutes and then we disembarked and started
our tour of Alcatraz. We had to walk all the way up to the top of the rock
(equivalent to climbing 12 flights of stairs, they say), so it was a bit
strenuous, but we are seasoned hikers!
As far as the tour goes: It was pretty cool! We first watched a video made by the History
Channel with stories from Alcatraz to get our bearings before taking the Cell
House tour. We each got our own set of
headphones and used those to navigate our way through the cells. There were a few points in the tour when
Maddy got a little creeped out (some
violent stories about riots or escape plans, for instance), but overall, we
really enjoyed it and even Will was able to follow along and stayed very
engaged. That took about an hour, start
to finish. I am glad we did the Alcatraz
tour!
 |
| These signs cracked me up! I need a few of these for my house. I think the same rules apply. |
DOWNTOWN SAN
FRANCISCO
After we left Alcatraz, we had plans to meet our Nashville
friends (they were out here visiting family), Kara & Luke and their little
girls at Pier 39 (basically, an outdoor mall/shopping/retail/touristy area.) We explored that area before beginning our
trek toward Fisherman’s Wharf, Ghiradelli Square, and in search of a trolley
ride. When we finally got to the area
to purchase the trolley ride tickets, there was a very long line of people
waiting to get on. The 45 minute line,
coupled with the realization it was going to cost our family $60 to ride the
trolley for an hour (round trip was $12/person), made it an easy decision to
skip that one. We felt a little odd,
coming to SF and NOT riding a trolley, but decided to put our money where our
mouth was and head up to Ghiradelli Square to spend $8 on a caramel Sundae $9
on a milkshake instead! PRIORITIES,
People!!! I think *that* was money well
spent.
Now is where it gets really interesting as far as all the
walking goes:
Michael and Luke really wanted to see Lombard Street—a very
windy, extremely curvy road that is apparently rather famous (I’d never heard
of it, but hey—I’m just a small town girl).
On the map, it appeared that Lombard was only (only! Famous last words!) 4 city blocks from where
we were enjoying our Ghiradelli treats, so we decided to try it out. What we didn’t quite realize, entirely, was
that these 4 city blocks? Well, they
were straight up hill. STRAIGHT up
hill. The elevation climb was
undoubtedly similar to one of our more intense Rocky mountain hikes. The award for “Best Lombard Street Climber”
goes to Kara who conquered San Francisco while 6 months pregnant and wearing
flip flops!!! No one else is allowed to
complain….
 |
| Maddy standing in front of Lombard Street |
After that we headed to our cars and drove across the Golden
Gate Bridge. Our family got out and
walked out onto the bridge a little ways.
I don’t think I’d do that again.
Cars are zooming past you and it’s so windy and cold….I had a hard time
enjoying the uniqueness of it because it was so dang loud and unpleasant. But
at least now I can say we did it!
MUIR WOODS
Last, but not least, we decided to drive about 20 miles
north of SF to Muir Woods, home of the giant redwood trees. Unfortunately, we got separated from Luke
& Kara and of course, we lost total cell reception, so we were bummed
thinking we wouldn’t be able to see them again.
Our family went ahead and did a 2 mile hike through the woods and were quite amazed at the size of these
suckers!
Happy Endings: When
we came out of our hike at Muir Woods, Luke & Kara and just shown up in the
parking lot and we were able to do a picnic dinner with them before parting
ways. It was the perfect end to a really
perfect day!
P.S. another perfect ending to the day? Our valet parking merely a block or two from Pier 43 only cost us $18!!!! We got in with an early bird special for the day. We were so blessed!
No comments:
Post a Comment