Today, our mission was to see all of the classic San Fran sites that we missed earlier in the week. Our first stop was to find the street where the Painted Ladies were. I am admitted a huge Full House fan, and while I know that the Full House "house" is actually in Los Angeles, the view of these colorful homes pans across during the opening credits, so it was still fun to find them. We stopped at the nice park across the street for a photo op and went along our way.
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| Painted Ladies |
Our next stop was to find a good place to park our car for the remainder of the day and walk around instead of driving. As we looked, we passed this crazy looking place: Lombard Street. I saw it on the map and told my husband that we weren't truly experiencing San Francisco until we drove down this windy, crooked street. As we drove passed the bottom of it and saw some cars attempting the drive, I concluded that they were crazy. I was content with walking up the side like a tourist and getting a picture at the bottom of all the flowers.
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| Lombard Street |
I remember being slightly disappointed by this. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but I felt like this area is where all tourist shops go to die. It was such a bizarre street to walk down. As we went from pier to pier, the shops were junky, the people were shady, and it wasn't anything like I thought it would be. Perhaps I couldn't shake the disney-esq Full House scenes that always showed this area full of sunshine and flowers, but it wasn't that way for me. Sure the day was sunny enough, but the atmosphere made me go into timid traveler mode.
We finally made our way to Pier 39 and everything changed. Depending on the time of year you go, you should stop and see the sea lions that gather there. My sister said that when she visited San Francisco in the summertime that they weren't there. When we visited in October, they were everywhere. See for yourself.
There were soooooo many of them. Some were sleeping, lots of them were just barking. It was quite a site to see. I probably stood there and just watched them for 30 minutes. I found them absolutely fascinating.
The rest of Pier 39 was pretty fun. As opposed to another city street like the rest of the San Fran, Pier 39 was a cross between an outdoor shopping mall and a carnival. I thoroughly enjoyed myself shopping in the different boutiques. I bought souvenirs for myself and others, fell victim to the Hawaiian pearl jewelry stand, and ate a scrumptious seafood dinner.
Hawaiian pearl jewelry stand you ask? Ha! It was my own fault. At the time, I had it in my mind that I wanted to buy jewelry from everywhere I traveled that was unique to the place. I had already picked up a jade pendant in Chinatown, so I had no interest in getting anything else. Then I saw a sign on the pearl booth where I could pick a pearl out of an oyster for just $15.00. It was vacation, and I thought it sounded fun. So, I tapped on the oyster with the magic spoon, said "ALOHA" and then they cut open the oyster and found the pearl. I should have stopped there because that was all I intended to do. But then they started showing me different settings that the pearl could fit into, and they sucked me in. I ended up getting a white gold flower with the pearl in the center. I do still wear and love the necklace, but it certainly wasn't worth the price they overcharged me for it. Hey! I was on vacation. And I was young and naive. Oh well. Live and learn.
The last thing on our itinerary for the trip was something I'd been excited about all week: touring Alcatraz Island. Since it was October and about a week or so before Halloween, I thought what spooky fun would it be to take the "Alcatraz at Night" tour. This was both good and bad. It was good because we took the ferry from San Francisco over to "The Rock" during sunset. The sunset behind the city was absolutely beautiful and well worth it.
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| Approaching Alcatraz Island |
Although the idea of visiting Alcatraz at night was "frightfully" fun (like my pun?) there were several downsides. The first being the fact that your ticket was good for a specifically timed ferry ride over but your choice of a ferry ride back. If we would have taken a ferry over earlier in the day, we could have taken any number of ferries back. Instead, we took the last ferry over and caught the last ferry back thus limiting out time on the island. Not that we needed much time because after sunset, it got dark very quickly. Y'know, like it usually does at night.
The other negative part about seeing Alcatraz at night was the fact that it was too dark to explore the island outside of the main prison block. They give you a map of the entire island when you arrive, and had it been daylight, we could have really had some fun exploring other parts of the island.
That being said, the rest of Alcatraz is amazing! I mention the two negative things because the island was so fascinating, I wish we had spent more time there. When we traveled to Italy, we took a lot of audio tours of different places. Most of them weren't so great. My sister assured me that the Alcatraz audio tour was worthwhile, and she was right. It is one of the most interactive and well done audio tours I've ever been on. They have prisoner excerpts and stories in addition to the basic historical facts. It is thoroughly entertaining and very memorable. No trip to San Francisco is complete without a tour of the Rock. Make sure you get your tickets in advance if you go during a busy season. Tickets sell out quickly, but they're easily obtainable online.
From Alcatraz, we stopped for some cinnamon-y churros at a food stand in Pier 39 before heading back to our car and ultimately our hotel. Our trip to California was nearing its end and it was time to head home.
I hope you've enjoyed my adventures in San Francisco and Yosemite National Park. For any of you timid travelers like me out there, this is a very easy and low anxiety adventure. You don't have any of the worries you have with foreign travel like language and currency yet you can still have a wonderful time. (It's cheaper too!) But not all domestic travel is cheap. For my next blog segment, I'll stay stateside once more and tell you all about my cruise to Alaska. After that, I'll change gears and take you with me to the Far East island of Japan.
Thanks for reading!
- Foxy the Traveler
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