Alcatraz

Lombard Street
One of the steeper sides of russian hill - steep hills the cars park vertically to the road
from the bottom of Lombard street

From the top of Lombard street

On the tram
Tram - historic line
View of the engines pulling the cable that the cable cars use
Grip that is set in the car and grips the cable
Old cable cars

View from the ferry

Alcatraz

View of the city from the island
Cafeteria

Kitchen - notice the knives that prisons could use
On the ferry about to go back to the city
View of the San Fran skyline and the bay bridge

Cell block
Solidary confinement
Inside the soli cell
Visiting time
View from Alcatraz

Inside the Kitchen
Walking through one of the "tunnels" in Alcatraz
Water had to be shipped into the island
Burnt out remains of the prison wardens social club
Cell

For my second full day in the city I hopped on the ferry for the 12 minute ride to Alcatraz. All in all i spent around 3-4 hours there. The island is a lot smaller than i imagined and you could pretty much walk around the circumference in around 10 minutes. The island is part of the National Parks service and so has rangers giving talks and guiding you around. Dorry, our guide, gave us a tour of some of the old buildings. She was fairly annoying in that she could only speak with her eyes closed. Now this fascinated me more than her talk and so i came away not really knowing much. We looked around the prison blocks and cells. The Cells were absolutely tiny. They were not more than 7 foot by 5 foot big. They didn't even have a sink, just a small loo. Dorry, our guide, told us all about the escape attempts, the living conditions etc but what struck me was how soul destroying it must have been to be so close to the city (you could hear a lot of city noises and even see across the bay from some of the windows) and yet be stuck in a tiny room for the vast majority of the day. It drove prisoners crazy and I'm not surprised. We also saw where the famous breakout happened (just like in the film). The authorities thought that the two that escaped drown in the bay but 2,000 swimmers make the swim across the bay for pleasure every year. Even a 7 year old boy made it! Vies from the island were breathtaking especially Angel Island, which was used to hold Japanese Americans during the second world war. The island was covered in a slight fog which made it look like it was covered in icing. After arriving back in the city i had a walk along the Fisherman's wharf part of town. It is lined with piers, some still active and some that have been turned into tourist attractions. The most famous is pier 39. Sea Lions rest along the pier front and on the pier is a shopping centre, museum, aquarium etc. It was pretty busy and tacky. I caught the cable car and headed to the cable car museum. It houses the motors that run the cable cars. There are only three cable car lines still in use and mainly used by tourists. The system is pretty amazing as there are three huge motors that pull on a ring of wire that runs constantly under the roads where the cars run. Cable cars are unmotorised and basically sit on tracks and have a mechanism that when engaged dips into the street and grabs the wire as it is turning thus pulling the car. Apparently 8 out of ten people that try out for the job don't manage to master the system. I then travelled up Russian hill to the second crockedest street in America (after wall street) - that's how its referred to. The street is basically so steep that it was redesigned so that it runs not straight down but side to side eventually reaching the bottom of the hill. Its a big pull for tourists and while i was there at least 10 people got out of their cars to take pictures. No one worried about the genuine traffic and just stood there in the middle of the road taking pictures!! The houses on the street are incredibly expensive and don't come onto the market very frequently - I'm not surprised as the views from the houses were straight down into downtown.