San Francisco day 1: Alcatraz, Chinatown, Piers 1 to 41

Today was really the first day in San Francisco, we had a lot of things planned and left the house at 6:30 AM

We walked towards Fillmore street, then took a left
We passed this nice looking liquor store

After we climbed up we came to this nice view, I believe the call this the Fillmore Steps



We continued down towards the pier where we wll take the ferry, we passed this cute cable car


 

After waiting in line for a little we boarded the ferry.  The interesting thing is that these are hybrid ferries,  they have solar panels as well as wind turbines. Here is a pic of what it looks like




Inside the boat, they have a panel that shows how much power is being generated, this is a live panel and is being updated constantly



Here is a short timelapse I took from the ferry



Here is what Alcatraz looks like from the ferry



Once we got on the island we listened to a introduction. If you ever go to Alcatraz, you will notice that there are a lot of flies, they are everywhere, one of them even flew into my sons mouth

After the introduction we started to walk up towards the prison cells, what you see below is the flank defense howitzer



In 1866 Alcatraz's role was to protect San Francisco, the army had placed 1100 cannon along the island's perimeter

Further up was the morgue



After we made it to the prison, we passed the laundry room





Doesn't look to appealing to me

To get the audio tour, we had to wait in line near the showers



Here is what a cell looks like



What you see below is the hole, this is where inmates go when they are in solitary confinment


This is a view of the cells, I can't even imagine being locked up in one of these


The most frustrating part for the inmates was that they could hear the people in San Francisco having fun while they were miserable in their cells

Below is the command center







This gentleman you see in the picture is Jim Albright


Jim Albright was the last guard to leave Alcatraz

Overall, I liked the visit to Alcatraz a lot. The tour was done really well, the presentation was excellent. I even went into one of the cells and into the hole as well. Highly recommended if you are ever visiting San Francisco. Just make sure to make reservations for the first tour at 8:40 AM

After Alcatraz, we took the ferry back and walked to pier 1 to get some food

On the way there we saw this GOcar, looks like it is a GPS guided tour car?



We passed this skateboard cart

Here is the same cart but just a part of it


After we had some food, we walked back towards pier 39 to look at the sea lions



Here is also a short video of these loud creatures


While looking at the sea lions, I noticed this huge Maersk line container ship


Here is also a short time lapse of the ship



Next up was Boudin bakery, here are some pictures

Bread shaped into teddy bears



A look at the bakery



Inside the bakery, this looked interesting




Next up was Lombard street




From Lombard street, you could see Coit tower


Coit Tower, also known as the Lillian Coit Memorial Tower, is a 210-foot (64 m) tower in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The tower, in the city's Pioneer Park, was built in 1933 using Lillie Hitchcock Coit's bequest to beautify the city of San Francisco; at her death in 1929 Coit left one-third of her estate to the city for civic beautification. The tower was proposed in 1931 as an appropriate use of Coit's gift. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 29, 2008.

Hot lips

We then walked towards Chinatown. First up was Golden Gate fortune cookie. Supposedly fortune cookies were invented here


A person making the fortune cookies


You can actually write your own fortune on paper, they will then put that into a freshly baked cookie. The kids made some for  their grandparents

Here is a short video of the person making the fortune cookies



A mural in Chinatown


A shot of transamerica Pyramid

The Transamerica Pyramid at 600 Montgomery Street between Clay and Washington Streets in the Financial District of San Francisco, California, is a 48-story postmodern building and the second-tallest skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline. Construction began in 1969 and finished in 1972


After Chinatown, we had dinner and walked back to the house

All in all, we did a lot of walking, I think that is the best way to get a feel of the city. We walked further than if we ran half a marathon



Here is what it looks like on a map



That is it for today...next stop is the Disney museum

San Francisco day 0... getting there

We decided to visit San Francisco as part of a family vacation. This is day 0 of that vacation, getting there.

We got up nice and early, ate breakfast and arrived at the airport at around 8:50 AM. Our flight was at 11. I must say that this fast the shortest line I had ever seen at the TSA, it tool us maybe 5 minutes to pass through.

Once we made it past TSA, we went to our gate and waited. After 30 minutes, the announced that the plane was delayed because of fog and clouds in San Francisco

So we walked around and looked at airplanes and took some pictures



They started boarding at 11 and we all got on the plane... of course now we had to decide who was getting the 2 window seats between the 5 of us  :-)



I like how Virgin America did the lights in the airplane, it looked really cool

Here is a short timelapse from the takeoff

Takeoff earlier #airplane #takeoff #timelapse #videos

A post shared by Denis Gobo (@denisgobo) on Aug 15, 2017 at 2:56pm PDT

After the takeoff, it would take about 6 hours to fly from Newark to San Francisco.

I read a good number of pages of the book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

Looking out of the window, I noticed these strange circles



Here is also a pic of the mountains that my son took



One of the movies available on the plane was Logan, I watched that, it was ok, I thought the little girl was pretty good

After we landed we took a cab to the house. We then headed over to Whole Foods to get some waters and some food. I noticed that there are many more instacart people working in this Whole Foods than in the one in Princeton.



We walked back past Fillmore street



Back at the house we ate, showered  and went to bed

I am writing this at 4 AM...because jetlag  :-(

Today day 1 starts.. that will be its own post