Today was just a straight up great day. I got to San Francisco early and dropped my car off at my hostel.
The hostel I'm staying at is a reformed fort, and based on the shape of the doors, I think my room is an old army hospital room. It's pretty cool.
I started the day off with a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. It is longer than I thought! The walk across it (and back again) took over an hour by the time I stopped and took photos and got delayed by slow cyclists.
It's really popular to ride a bike across it, but it seems like maybe you can forget how to do this, seeing as I almost got run over on 3 separate occasions.
After the bridge, I headed to the pier that takes Alcatraz tours. I hadn't thought to book tickets in advance, which had sold out weeks ago, but after a tip off from a security guard, I found out that if you wait for a few boat-loads of people, occasionally, a group may be missing a member and will sell you their spare ticket.
I waited about an hour for this to happen, and was about to leave when a group was short-numbered, and gave me their spare ticket for free!!
The boat ride to the island was really cool, seeing the whole city skyline from the water, and the prison slowly looming up at us.
The prison itself was really interesting. For such a short-lived prison (only 30 years as a federal penitentiary, but more as an army prison) there is so much history. Some of the stories from the audio guide, as well as just some of the signs hanging around the place were so eerie.
After I got back to the mainland, I went and got some dinner (listen up Maccas, In n Out have burgers a hundred times better. If it weren't for the lack of free wifi, I would be completely converted).
On the walk home, I stopped by pier 39 which had a heap of really interesting shops. It is in the main part of Fisherman's Pier, a massive tourist trap, but was still totally worth the visit anyway. I almost stopped by Bubba Gump Shrimp, but was too full. "You got new legs, Lieutenant Dan"
I heard a strange noise though, so followed it, and by the side of the pier, there were hundreds of Sea Lions! I have never seen that many in one place, and they were all just sunning themselves, talking to each other, and climbing over each other in massive piles!
I could have watched them for hours, they were hilarious!
Tomorrow, cable cars and the Yosemite xx