USA – San Francisco

Landing and making our way into San Francisco was strange. It felt like we knew the place already. I’m sure it was a combination of computer games, movies and TV shows that made everything look like a familiar city. This would continue over the coming days as we worked our way around the famous landmarks.

On our first morning in San Francisco we went and hired a bike from around the corner of our downtown hostel and headed west towards the Golden Gate Park. On the way out through the neighbourhoods we didn’t encounter too many of San Francisco’s famous big hills. We did however go past the houses from the old TV show, Full House.

The Full House houses

We went up the de Young art museum in the park which gave really good views out over the city on a fantastic clear day (given San Francisco is famous for its fog, we were really lucky). We continued on through the park to the coast line at lands end. The park was really nice and seemed like a great area to be able to hang out on a fine sunny day

At the coast we headed uphill past the seal islands, got our first glimpse of the famous Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and through Presidio with more great open space, gardens and short walks. There were some really nice houses too and clearly well off areas of the city around this part of the cycle.

We arrived up to the bridge soon enough and it was quite an impressive sight! The red bridge against the blue sky background made for some great photo’s. The views off of the bridge back to the city and Alcatraz were also great with the really clear day.

We finished up our ride in Sausalito and got the ferry back to the city piers just as the sun was setting behind the bridge, which was an awesome finish to a great day out in San Francisco.

The following day we had organised to catch up with Karen and Ramsey who we did the Inca trek with back in Peru. They had given us some tips of things to do in San Francisco and booked us for lunch at Greens down at Fort Mason. We rode on the famous San Francisco cable cars and hung out the side as we went up and down the really steep hills. They pretty much exist only for tourists these days, but were cool none the less and it got us there faster too. Lunch was really nice, they had picked a really good spot and with clear views out over the bay area. It was great to catch up with Karen and Ramsey again, reminisce about the Inca trek and tell them about our travels. They gave us some good advice for the upcoming drive down the pacific coast and we promised to repay the favours whenever they make it down to Perth!

After a quick stop in at Kara’s cupcakes, we burnt off the calories by walking back up the hills to twists of Lombard Street and then down through Chinatown to get back to our hostel to do some planning for the upcoming days

On our final morning we had booked onto the Alcatraz tour, the quick ferry ride out there over the really calm waters on another fine day made me say to Tanya, ‘I could have swam back to shore after escaping the prison.’ On the island we started with a 15 minute video of the history of the island from its military prison beginnings through to the penitentiary prison that its most famous for. The audioguide around the prison itself was fascinating and probably one of the best audio tours that I have had. They had ex prison guards and prisoners taking you around the prison on the audio tour

Don’t drop the shower soap

It was really interesting to hear the accounts of the 1946 ‘Battle of Alcatraz’ escape attempt and the 1962 escape made famous by Clint Eastwood in the movies. The escape cells were reconstructed and the audioguide told the details well. On the way out I picked up a book written by a lady who lived on the island as a child that looks into the 1962 escape and she was even on site to sign it for me.

Grenade marks from the retaking of the prison in 1946

Escape cells

The escape route up the service pipes

We got back into the city and picked up our hire car to start our journey south.

Final thoughts
Daniel – I could live in San Francisco. I see why it is a popular city, maybe we had a rose tinted view with having such good weather given how bad it can be. The city had a really cool vibe, great open spaces, nice suburbs and houses and natural scenery outside of the city. A great stop on the journey.

Tanya – San Francisco had to be my favourite city so far. My judgement may be clouded by the amazing weather we had, we were very lucky to have 2 beautiful sunny days. Biking around was great, we were able to cover alot of ground and really enjoy the neighbourhoods (although not the up-hills) and it was a great way to cross the bridge. It was fantastic to see our old mates all the way from Machu Picchu, share stories and eat great food.