Day 4 San Francisco

So this was on July 23. We took the advise of the gal at the hotel and took the ferry straight to downtown. It was super windy and cold so thank goodness I brought a jacket. We hustled right over from the pier we arrived at down to the Alcatraz ferry pier with a few minutes to spare. So on we went to another ferry. We were so excited to see Alcatraz. Our impressions were that it was really old and crumbly but it was so amazing to be there. So much history there and we have seen it lots on tv and in the movies but it doesn't come close to being there in person.

Docking at the pier

It was quite a climb to get up to the cell block

Still climbing

Who knew there were gardens there originally planted by the wives and families of the guards.

This is the "yard"

The morgue

 So we finally made it up to the cell block. That's where you pick up your headset for the tour. It was amazing because the real people who were either prisoners there at the time or guards were the ones telling their stories.

 The cell block was huge. They could have used a segway back in the day!

typical cell

Solitary confinement

Christina in solitary. Not sure what her offense was. She must have had a bad lawyer.

This is the gun gallery where the armed guards worked. No guns were allowed down in the cell block. Keys for the yard door etc were lowered down on the hook and line in the bottom left of the picture for the guards below..

This is the famous cell where the prisoner used a spoon to dig a hole to escape into the utility row behind the cells. The three of them that escaped were never found but they are believed to be dead from the cold and currents of the bay.

 It was an amazing place. The only bad part...NO FOOD on the island. So that sort of limits your stay. I beat the system though because I bought a souvenir chocolate bar in the gift shop that we shared!! Yup tossed the souvenir wrapper and we went to town. It held us over until we got back. Never underestimate the power of chocolate.

 So once we got back we walked the famous pier 39. It was really fun. Lots of shops and restaurants jammed in everywhere.

An early dinner at Bubba Gump's right on the water.

Fisherman's wharf was pretty cool. It was really crowded and not the cleanest of places but there was seafood everywhere as you can imagine. We just kept on walking and didn't want to risk a hospital visit by me hanging around.

Fisherman's wharf

 So our destination was Ghiradelli Square of course. We mastered the art of going in multiple doors to increase the number of free chocolate squares we got. That was pretty fun!

Our dessert!!

Ahhh the chocolate displays were fabulous.

 So we decided it might be quicker and easier to walk a bit up the hills to catch the trolley to get us to the subway that night.  Of course every singe trolley that passed by was too full to accommodate us so we just kept on walk!! I have been on steep roads before but holy cow these were crazy steep. And they were never ending.

We just happened into the top of Lombard street on our "walk" to the subway. It was amazing. We just knew we had to come back with the car and drive down it.

This trolley that went by had to back up and take a running start up this hill. Wow.

 So for the first while we were loving our walk. We went through Russian Hill, Knob Hill and about 30 blocks down Hyde St. We passed by some amazingly beautiful Victorians. They were incredible and we spent our time admiring them and the lovely neighborhoods. It started to get easier when after about 20 blocks we were going down hill for once. Gradually as it started getting darker we noticed there were no more trolleys and taxis or anything. No more people out for a stroll. Also the neighborhood wasn't so nice. The darker it got the faster we walked even though by now we were really feeling it. Apparently we ended up in the Tenderloin district. We had to get through it to get to the subway. In the dark. With guys coming out of the woodwork in little groups with their hoods up etc. Yeah we were freaking out. Me and my coach purse and Christina being a tall cute young blond! We really believe we had targets hovering above our heads and we also believe we made it through that mess and straight to the subway and out of there because we had help. Our prayers were definitely answered because we shouldn't have made it through like we did. The ironic thing is when we first saw our hotel the day before we thought is was pretty ghetto outside. Well now we were never so glad to see it again as we were that night. It looked pretty darn safe and cozy. So we walked 35 blocks AFTER we had dessert and we had walked at least ten before that along the piers. We were exhausted that night and felt we deserved a sleep in the next day.

Day 3 San Simeon to Oakland

This was another action packed day! We got a late start and were lucky they held our tour bus for us to get up to Hearst castle this morning. I had gotten our tickets online so that saved us. We had a tour scheduled for the Upstairs Bedroom Suites and the Grand rooms tour. Kind of frustrating that you have to take multiple tours to see everything. At $25pp we picked the two that would get us the most inside the castle saving us a little something to see if we get back! We were so excited because we love touring cool houses. 

Iconic view of Hurst Castle-looks like a catholic church

The shuttle had a couple of miles to get us to the top of the mountain. This is from half way maybe.

The Bedroom suites tour

ALL the ceilings were amazing

You couldn't use flash inside so the pictures are grainy at best! This is the Library.

Highlight of the Downstairs - the Dining Room.

The front room or reception room was huge. This shows about 1/3 of it.

 The grounds were amazing and we spent lots of time just wandering around taking pictures. It took alot of time because we were all focused on getting a picture without a million people in it. No easy feat.

You can see the ocean from here clear out there. It doesn't show up well but the views are amazing.

 

The swimming pools were amazing and they say the Hurst family still comes up from time to time to swim there. It was hard not to jump in because it looked so refreshing and cool.

We had the most crowds down here with all of us dreaming about taking a dip in this cement pond!

The indoor pool was amazing as well. HUGE.

The whole pool was ten feet deep and yup that's 24 kt gold glass tiles lining the bottom.

So we drug ourselves away from this place after a fabulous time. San Simeon is out in the middle of no where on the CA coast we grabbed lunch from the food cart at the visitor center and hit the road. We drove up the coast on Highway 1 for about 4 hours toward San Francisco. It was just beautiful. The only thing I would suggest is going south would have been better because there aren't as many paces to pull off going north and you have to turn around to get to most of them on the other side and that's a huge pain. Lots of traffic so we just took alot of pictures from the car.

We just loved the drive but got a little sleepy as we went so like any great road trippers we pulled over and had a nap!

We drove through Big Sur which was beautiful and forested. There were a few fun little restaurants to eat at but parking looked like a nightmare. We expected a town but it wasn't really. We drove through Carmel By The Sea but by then the fog was really rolling in. Cute town though.

We kept on going through Monterrey but then the fog was so think we couldn't see any of it so we kept on going. It was really cold and windy there too. By the time we hit San Jose it was time for dinner but we couldn't find anything but industrial looking areas. We finally found a mall (about the 100th we passed in CA) and had dinner there at Red Robin. So when we pulled into Oakland we were ready to stop for the night. I had reservations at the Courtyard downtown Oakland which cost a fortune and when we pulled up we were really alarmed. It was a scary neighborhood. China town was right there but it was just scary. We expected gunshots and chalk outlines on the sidewalks kind of scary. Neon on the hotel and everything. Inside was good though but we were still a little concerned.. Come to find out that was nothing compared to the next night's adventure!!