The San Francisco Chronicles Day 2 - Locked up, Lost and Laughing

When we awoke Saturday morning we were refreshed and renewed. It was a good thing because I had an agenda. First up was a tour of Alcatraz. Now let me just say that this is not a place I ever thought I’d visit. I’ve seen the Clint Eastwood movie and studied about it in school but never in a million years thought I’d darken the doors of a prison, let alone the most famous prison in the country. Our ferry boat left at 9:30am and took us to the island. It was incredibly surreal to approach the shoreline and think about the inmates, like Al Capone, who had made the same trip.

The first stop was the theater where we watched a short film about the history of The Rock. It was really interesting and I learned a few things I never knew like the fact that many of the guards and their families actually made their homes on the island and that Native American Indians occupied it for about 14 weeks after it was shut down in the 1969. RubyDooby didn’t find it as interesting though since about 10 minutes in I heard her snoring and gave her a quick punch in the arm.

Once we were well versed in our Alcatraz history we set off on an audio tour of the prison. We all had headsets that guided us and gave an in-depth history lesson about each section. Of course, Gator started complaining immediately that his didn’t work and RubyDooby forgot she had a headset on and started shouting at him to return it. I’m pretty sure I walked away as though I had never met them before in my life. Little Ocho made it about 10 minutes with the headset before she decided it was boring and creepy. It ended up being a good thing since towards the end there was some questionable language in the narration and the unfortunate sound-effects that went along with a story about people getting stabbed in the dining hall. She also wasn’t a big fan of the dummies lying in the beds of a few of the cells. They were there to demonstrate the story of the famous Escape in 1962. She didn’t think it was funny or educational. She said it was freakin her out. I will defend myself to those of you thinking "why did you take your 7 year old to a prison?" It's because everything I read encouraged you to bring kids and said there was nothing scary or distrubing about the tour. In their defense, it really wasn't that bad. There are scarier things on the Disney Channel. My child just happends to be a little overly-sensitive. Lesson learned. Never take Ocho to prison. Got it.

Handiman & Ocho on the steps of the Recreation Yard. This is the place you see in all the movies:

She also wasn’t too thrilled when I forced her to go with me inside one of the cells to have our picture taken. Since I was pretty confident that this was the one and only time either of us would be inside a prison cell I wanted to seize the moment. There was no need to take Handiman’s picture. He’d been there, done that.

Me & Ocho in our cell:

One of the best things about the island is the view you get of San Francisco. You can see all points of the city including the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate. It was breathtaking.

You can see the Golden Gate in the background. None of the pictures I took really did justice to the view:

Once our tour was over we headed to Fisherman’s Wharf. We walked down Pier 39, stopped for lunch and took a little rest. After that it was off to find the Cable Cars! I’m pretty sure I was the most excited of the bunch about this little venture. There are many different cable car lines but I made it clear that I would only be happy riding one that looks like the kind you see in the Rice-A-Roni commercials. No other car would do. The most authentic cable car line in the city is the Powell-Hyde line so that’s where we headed. Our map indicated that there was a station on Fisherman’s Wharf so we felt it made perfect sense to start there. We parked the Big Blue Boat and bought our tickets at the booth near Maritime Park. We had to wait about 1 hour to board and we had absolutely no idea where it was taking us or how we’d get back but by-golly, we were riding! Once on board Handiman bee lined for an outside spot (I had made it clear I wanted to either ride hanging on to a post or on the back because that’s the way they do it on TV) and he & I grabbed a pole to hang on to. This meant that Little Ocho was forced to sit beside a man that she didn’t know. You can see the joy this brought her in the picture below.
When we took off up one of the famous hills I soon realized that perhaps hanging on to the side might not have been the best decision but it was too late. We traveled up, up, up and then all of a sudden way doooooooowwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnn. The streets of this city are exactly like Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyworld. Except they don’t require a safety bar to hold you in. After a pretty long ride our driver instructed us it was the end of the line. In order to get back to our car we’d have to get in line and ride another car down. He then put us out in the middle of Union Square, the shopping district of downtown. It was a little windy and cool and RD needed to find a restroom so we went inside a Burger King. We got a table and waited for her. 45 minutes later she emerged to tell us that she had been waiting in line almost the entire time and then had to pay to get inside the bathroom! Crazy. So let’s review. We waited an hour to take a 15 minute ride and then waited 45 minutes for a bathroom. We have no idea where we are and we need to get back to our car. We take a look at the line to get back onto the car and decided we should walk down a few blocks and wait at a corner stop. You see, we learned traveling up that the cable cars stop at almost every corner and if they have room they’ll let you board. The key phrase here is “if they have room”. We stood at a corner for about 20 minutes shivering and becoming increasingly agitated with one another (except for Gator who was agitated with the mass quantity of people surrounding him) and watched car after car pass us by yelling “No More Room! Wait For The Next Car!” The cable cars had lost their charm. We just wanted to go back to our hotel and sit down. After about 30 minutes we decided we’d have to go back to the cable car stop and wait in line. Once in line we only had to wait about 15 minutes to get a seat. This solidified our status as geniuses.

We rode back and made the long walk uphill to our car. We started back to our hotel with the aid of Hillary and as she brought us closer we looked around and noticed something peculiar. We were back at the cable car stop at Union Square! Turns out our hotel was 3 blocks away. Yep. That’s right. If we had come back to the hotel and parked we could have ridden the cable car up and back in about an hour and been done with it. Geniuses I tell you.

We had a good laugh at ourselves and collapsed from exhaustion…..again. After a little while Handiman, Little Ocho & I headed out for dinner. We didn’t dare get back in the car so we decided to walk a few blocks to Mel’s Dinner. It was the one used in the movie American Graffiti and had great food and a fun atmosphere.

Once again we ended our day with a trip to the pool and a good night’s sleep. The next day would be a big one. We were finally headed to the Golden Gate Bridge.