Day Six & Seven - San Francisco

Day five started with breakfast at a diner, we both enjoyed buttermilk pancakes smothered in maple syrup to give us some energy for lots of walking and shopping. We walked the couple of blocks from our hotel to Union Square to see what San Francisco had to offer.

The answer is, not that much actually. Whilst there are plenty of shops, none of them are that special and most are what you'd find in any other American city. Chain stores take up most of the space filled with unimpressive and not particularly cheap clothes. As an anti-depressant we headed for the G-Star shop on Geary St as successful is practically guaranteed.

San Francisco's famous Cable Cars (when they are working!)

We weren't disappointed as we walked out with 2 pairs of jeans and a belt between us! Yay! I also managed to find a nice pair of shoes from Nine West on sale! In the afternoon, we were done with shopping and walked up to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. On a whole, it's San Francisco's Darling Harbour which can be translated as over-priced, tacky tourist trap. The only thing worth seeing are the cute seals that have made Pier 39 their home since the 1986 earthquake. The day was too foggy to even see Alcatraz or the Golden Gate Bridge!

Awwww, the seals of Pier 39

Day six was a busier day as we'd booked tickets to Alcatraz for 9.10am. We decided we'd get up early to make the 45 min walk up to Pier 33. We ended up walking through Chinatown and up the Embarcadero to the Pier before hopping on the ferry to travel the 1.5 miles to Alcatraz.

Alcatraz Island from the Ferry

It's been around 20 years since I last did this tour with my Dad and I had to say I couldn't remember that much so re-doing the audio tour around the cell house to learn the history and get a feel for what life must have been like was fascinating. Life was pretty brutal on the Island, with the city so tantalisingly close the inmates made several escape attempts over the years before the Prison closed in 1963.

We caught the ferry back to San Francisco around 11.30 and grabbed some lunch before walking to Lombard Street (the windiest road) to snap a few picks before attempting to catch a cable car back to Union Sq and home for a rest. We paid the (extortionate) $10 fare and traveled about 5 blocks before the cable car broke down. A truck turned up to push the cable car off the corner but we were then stuck there and we had to walk the rest of the way! Ripped off!

Lombard Street from below - amazing street and houses

We took a detour into Macy's as we needed to find Jo some shoes for dinner tonight as we were meeting our good friends Kathryn & Travis for dinner in SOMA. We had success so it meant we didn't have to go to a really nice Thai restaurant called Ko Samui & The Monkey looking like backpackers in trainers. We are officially over our trainers now. It was so nice to have some actual shoes on again and it's only been six days!! As we complained to housekeeping (room not cleaned for both days!) they send up a nice bottle of white for us to enjoy whilst getting ready :)

Enjoying Thai in SOMA (South of Market)

It's been about 2 years since I last saw Kathryn, ironically in San Francisco so it was a really nice reunion - we enjoyed sharing some yummy dishes and all chatted and took photos and we all planned our day together tomorrow. We decided on going into Sonoma County about 1.5hrs away for a day trip to Healdsburg and the surrounding vineyards. Looking forward to it!