San Francisco is one cool city!

We got up on our first full day nice and early for our ferry out to Alcatraz. Wow it was a cold morning with a chilly wind to go with it plus the fog, not the nicest day to catch a ferry but luckily enough it cleared up for us later in the day. We got the first ferry out at 9:10am and spent just over two hours on Alcatraz exploring the island and doing an audio tour of the high security prison that closed in 1963. The tour was really interesting telling us all about the prisoners, the attempted breakouts, the guards that worked there with their family's that lived on the island and how three prisoners escaped and were never found, fascinating stuff!

Afterwards we caught a ferry back over to the mainland and walked up to Fisherman's Wharf on Pier 39. Fisherman's Wharf is full of restaurants and shops, very touristy but definitely worth the visit. On our walk around we went past this pearl shop where you could pick out your own shell and then have the pearl set so we decided to do it and Brett picked out the shell with a beautiful big pearl inside. We had it set in a pretty silver setting as a ring, we thought it was a nice keepsake from the trip that will last forever! As the fog had cleared up and the sun came out it turned out to be a beautiful day on the water so we had a lovely lunch in the sun before walking around and seeing some of the locals, a whole bunch of sea lions that laze around in the sun all day bickering and pushing each other into the water, they were quite entertaining to watch, we could have stood there for ages but there were places to see so we moved on.

Next stop was a beautiful park which overlooked the water from there we were going to catch a cable car but the line was way too busy so we climbed up the massive hilly street to the famous Lambard Street for some photos. Lombard Street, the crookedest street in San Fran but the prettiest. After getting some beautiful photos we decided to make the long walk back to our hostel. Our next stop on the way was north beach, which in fact is not a beach at all but the part of town known as little Italy. North beach is known for it's yummy restaurants but we managed to finally stumble across something Brett was desperately in need of, a hairdresser. After another average, but cheap, haircut we were off again with our next stop being a beautician before walking past little Italy then into China Town. For dinner we had ramen and then an early night to be ready for another day of hitting the pavement.

For our second and final day in San Fran we met up with some friends from our Turkey cruise for brunch. The food was amazing and the company was even better, it was also a champagne breakfast (Brett's first ever) which was just awesome! After stuffing ourselves silly we parted company and headed for the beautiful golden gate park (the prettiest park we've come across) where we took a long walk through ending in the Japanese Gardens where we explored this pretty little place. Afterwards we went on a massive walk in search of the bus stop to catch the bus to the Golden Gate bridge. What really surprised us was how different the temperatures can vary between small areas in San Fran, with the park being really hot and the bridge being bitterly cold due to the fog etc.

After taking loads of photos and going for a walk along the bridge we headed back to spend some more time with our friends so we met them at Dolores Mission Park for a real San Fran experience. This was a pretty cool park that people go to on nice Sunday afternoons with reggae music playing and people selling all sorts of things like 'fudge', beers and Guinness chocolate brownies which weren't too bad. This was really chilled out and definitely awesome place to people watch. After sitting in the sun drinking beers and chatting we went for a drink at a cool little bar where Brett tried an 18% beer and I had a white pear cider and ale beer mmm it was good! Our friends told us how they have little micro breweries in San Fran and there are loads of little bars everywhere selling really good beer.

For dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant for some good burritos that our friends raved about and told us we had to have before we left California. Wow they were good but man they blew our mouths off, especially Brett's!!! They were so spicy but hey we ate it all anyway as they were delicious! After a great day of seeing some of the real San Francisco it was time to say goodbye to our SF friends as we rolled on back to the ghetto where our hostel was.