Day 15 - Lombard Street, Cable Car Museum and Golden Gate Bridge

Saturday 26 April.

Today we split up and did our own things, the Godfrey's were going to hire Segways and have a look around the local area, and we were going to tackle our list of three things we wanted to see.

We left the house before 9am, and we headed into town on the Muni, we then transferred to a bus and headed towards Lombard Street.  We could have caught the cable car, but we had learnt our lesson not to get on at the start of the route.  The bus took us to within a few blocks of the bottom of Lombard Street (which is the best place to take photos).

Lombard Street's claim to fame is that it is the crookedest street in the world.

It was quite funny watching all the tourists driving down the street.

Once we walked up the street, we caught the cable car (no waiting yay!) to our next stop which was the Cable Car Museum.

This was really interesting (and free), and as well as being a museum, it is also the barn that houses the cable pullies, motors and sheaving wheels.  If you ever wanted to know how these cable cars operate, you can read a bit about it here.

The cables you can see here, run under the streets were the cable cars run, large wheels under ground help the cables turn corners.  The car is attached and unattached as necessary to stop and start.  This is all done manually by the grip man onboard the cable car.

We then went back outside to catch the cable card again to Powell Street.

This time Nick got lucky and got to stand on the outside...

We landed up walking down to Union Square, mainly because YELP told me that there was a Cheesecake Factory there!  (YELP is a great app that helps you find anything, anywhere - highly recommended even for when you are at home).

I think Nick was secretly hoping that Penny from 'The Big Bang Theory' would be our server!  Sadly she wasn't LOL.

And we had to force down some Cheesecake - It was bigger than this, but we had already started eating when we thought to take a photo.

After lunch we jumped on another bus and headed out to the Golden Gate Bridge.  Our original plan was to hire bikes to cycle over the bridge, but it was so cold and windy we decided against it, also it is a long way from Fisherman's Wharf were the bike hire places are to even get to the bridge (and it is mostly up hill).

We set out with the aim to walk to the first tower.

While on the bridge we looked down at a big old brick building, when we got back to the house we searched in Google and found that it was Fort Point, and decided that we would go back tomorrow to have a look at it.

Meanwhile, Dale, Wendy, Luke and Mitchell were on the Segways...

They had a different view of the Golden Gate Bridge...

and they also visited Union Square later in the day.

Day 14 - Alcatraz

Friday 25 April.

Today we had a booking on the 10.30 boat to Alcatraz.  It was raining, but we couldn't complain as it was the first rain we had since leaving home on 11th April - and Christchurch had had a LOT of rain since then.

The ride over only took about 10-15 minutes.

Alcatraz began in the 1850's as a military post designed to hold prisoners and protect the Bay.  In 1909, the Army leveled the post and left its basement to serve as the foundation for a new correctional facility.  In 1933, it was transferred to the Department of Justice for use as a maximum-security Federal prison.  Known as "The Rock", Alcatraz housed the most incorrigible inmates of the Federal system.  While there were 14 separate escape attempts, officially, no one ever succeeded.  In March 1963, Alcatraz closed after 29 years because operating expenses were too high.  In 1973, it opened to the public and has become one of the most popular National Park sites.

There is an audio tour of the main cell block, this was really fascinating.  A lot of the narration is from ex inmates and prison guards.

We stayed on Alcatraz Island for about 3 hours, we would have stayed longer and enjoyed some of the outdoor areas more, but it was a very cold day and often raining.

After arriving back on the mainland, we went to Boudin Bakery for lunch.  Boudin Bakery has been baking sourdough in San Francisco since 1849, and a portion of the original mother dough is used to start every sourdough loaf they bake today.  The adults all had soup in bread bowls, and the kids went across the road and had McDonald's!

Once we were full, we headed down the road towards the famous San Francisco Cable Cars.  We stood in line at the turn around area, which we later found out was a bad idea.  We probably waited for 45 minutes before getting on a car, if we had walked to the next stop we would have gotten on a lot faster.  But it was interesting watching how each car is rolled onto the turntable and turned by hand before heading off again.

When we did get on a car, we were squished into the inside of the car, and couldn't really see out.  Although we could see how steep the streets were that we were going up then down again on.  When we got to the end of the line, our two families split up and headed different directions.  We landed up going to GAP and buying the girls a hoodie each, plenty of photos of them being modeled coming up soon.

It was then time to head back to our house and warm up.

Day 13 - Las Vegas to San Francisco

Thursday 24 April.  Our flight from Las Vegas to San Francisco was scheduled for 11.55am, so we left our hotel about 9.30 to make sure we had plenty of time to return our rental car and get the shuttle to the airport.  Both  the airports we have been to so far - LAX and Las Vegas, both have off site car rental depots which provide a free shuttle to and from them.

We got to the airport with plenty of time, and then our flight got delayed.  By the time we took off we were about an hour late leaving.

Once we arrived at SFO we travelled by shuttle to our house.

The house is actually a second floor apartment, it is about 30 minutes on the MUNI away from downtown San Francisco.  We all bought MUNI passes so we could use all the trolley/trains, cable cars and busses that we needed, with a good MUNI app on our phones we didn't really have any troubles finding our way around.

Our first night we headed into the Fishermans wharf area for dinner, and we had a bit of a look around, the temperature change from Las Vegas was fairly extreme, about 15celius difference, it was cold.  Then we caught the train home, it was an interesting experience, lots of weird people come out at night!