Day 34 - Thursday 20 May - San Francisco

This morning we got up earlyish, had breakfast and got ready for the day. We headed out to the local Walgreens (7-11) and brought a one day muni ticket so that we could go on the Cable cars, buses and trams.

We got on the Cable car at the end of Powell just before 830am. This cable car took us up Powell Street, and along Mason Street all the way to Fisherman’s wharf.

We hopped off at the end of the line, and walked over to pier 33 where we boarded a boat going out to Alcatraz Island. We had booked the 930am boat and it left right on time. We sat up the top of the boat and soaked in the views as well as some much needed sun.


We spent about 2 hours on Alcatraz, wondering around looking at all the buildings. We took the free audio tour of the main cell block and heard about what it was like for the guards and the inmates. Bubbles even spent some time in a cell, but Spanky declined the offer.

When we got back into the city it was just after noon, so we walked down to pier 1 and the Ferry building for some lunch. They had transformed the old building into a farmer market type location that fresh food and local produce to pick from. Originally this building was a Ferry terminal for everyone coming into the city for work from other areas of the bay, but when the bridges (Bay & Golden Gate) were build it was not needed very much. A freeway was build over it, but in the last major earthquake (late ‘80’s) the freeway collapsed. Instead of rebuilding the freeway over it again, they moved the freeway and redid the building up to its past grandeur.


We stopped by a chocolate store on the way back to pick up some more presents, but strangely Spanky declined some free samples.

We took a walk up Market Street and then hopped on a tram and then a bus to get us to a sports store we had found online. We finally found a place that had shoes that would fit Spanky and Bubbles got some things too. So we were much much happier than we were yesterday arvo.

We took the bus back to Union Square and headed for the hotel for a rest and to start packing.

At 530pm we headed out the front of our hotel and were picked up by Martha & Terry (it was perfect timing by all of us!). They drove us a few blocks away and we went and had dinner at this great little Italian restaurant. The food was wonderful and we all left the restaurant feeling very full. Terry took us on a bit of a drive of the city, and we headed out to the Golden Gate Park. We went to the beach as well, and saw the Pacific Ocean. On the way back to the hotel, Martha pointed out places to us, like the area her grandparents lived in, the hospital where she was born and other places she used to go to as a child.

We were all pretty tired by the time we got dropped off to the hotel (we’re sure the food helped with that), but it was great to be able to see Martha & Terry one last time before we left.