This was extra cool because last week we watched The Rock with Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery, so I had lots of points of reference for Alcatraz. Here’s the island with the fog-covered Golden Gate Bridge in the background:
We went on a very interesting audio tour through the cell blocks, where Al “Scarface” Capone, the Birdman and many other “incorrigibles” were housed from 1934-1963. It was extremely windy and cold out there, so we did some star jumps in the exercise yard to warm up:
After we got back to Fisherman’s Wharf and had lunch, we hired a couple of bikes and rode along the waterfront to the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog still lingered:
This was when we realised how lucky we were to have seen the bridge clearly on our way in the prvious day. We rode across the bridge to the Sausalito side, where the air was clearer, then turned back.
Alcatraz winds were only a warm-up for that bridge. It was super gusty and cold, and I was pretty glad to be off it by the end!
By the time we got back to the bike hire place, we’d ridden around 17km – some of it pretty hilly – and our non-trained butts were in pain. Needless to say, we were sitting down very gently the following days!
I had arranged to visit a Pacific Empire Chorus rehearsal that night (about 50min north of San Francisco), so we started making our way back to the hotel. We were going to ride part of the way on the historic cable car, but the line was huge so we decided to cab it. Unfortunately, there were no cabs in sight and calling didn’t help, so we walked and walked and walked, up streets that looked like this:
Eventually we did find a cab, but we were late and only just made it to the rehearsal in time. Matt was tired so napped in the car and got dinner while I was at the rehearsal. Pacific Empire had quite a few members missing from rehearsal, but they were still bigger than Brisbane City Sounds and had a completely different repertoire to us. They were lovely ladies and really fun to listen to. After we drove back to town, we were extremely tired so had no trouble getting to sleep!
The next morning, we decided not to bother with the cable car, and got a head start out to Mariposa instead. This town is just outside Yosemite National Park, and only about 3h drive from San Francisco. We arrived by lunch time, and in the afternoon headed into the southern part of Yosemite, to the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias.
These trees are related to the coastal redwoods we’d seen a couple of days before, but have bigger trunks and are slightly shorter (~94m instead of ~115m, from memory). Although not the tallest or the broadest trees in the world, these sequoias are special because when you add them all up, they’re the largest living thing on the planet. Like the coastal redwoods, they can live well over 1000 years, and are resistant to fire, insects and microbes.
I’d read bad things about parking availability within Yosemite, so we hit the hay early again, so we could leave by 7am the next day.
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