Hawkeye :: Murali’s Blog

I am like a day behind in chronicling my adventures in the West Coast of the USA. But anyways, here goes

Yesterday was the day for the San Francisco city tour on a Double decker bus and the trip to Alcatraz prison island

The day started off on a rather bad note with rain … well ! if you imagine rain and a a city tour on a top-less double decker bus, you’ll get the picture. Not good eh ? well, that was the start. So, off we went around 9.15ish in the morning and the first stop was the Golden Gate bridge, since it was kind if drizzling, I remained on the ground floor on the bus. Since I have seen the bridge enough number of times before, it was a great excitement for me. But talking of bridges, I really do wonder why the Bay Bridge never gets its due even though both of them were started at the same time ??? Really have to pity the Bay Bridge. I’d say it is good, it is much longer, has 2 decks, has a tunnel in between etc etc

Anyways, after golden gate started the real city tour, general trips around the Exploratarium, Civic center, Presedia, Union square, Van Ness, China town. A general trip around the places to see in SFO. It was OKish, not very impressed though. The Photo ops too were few and far in between. Looked like these folks were in a kind of a hurry (the tour was booked through sightseeingworld.com

In the afternoon post lunch, it was time for Alcatraz. The boat left for the Island at 1.15 and it was a brief 10 minute boat ride. I must say that Alcatraz is hyped as a tourist desitination. Yeah ! there is some kick in going inside a jail for the first time and too something as famous as the Alcatraz, but other than rows and rows of cells and various stories spun around the likes of Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, the Birdman of Alcatraz and the Escape stories there really isnt all that much in Alcatraz. If a push comes to a shove, this can be given the go by. There really arent any a ha ! moments here

The rest of the evening was spent around the Pier 39 area. Really loved the Sugar donuts that I had at Trish’s Mini Donuts. I’d certainly recommend this to anyone visiting San Francisco. The golden hued setting sun did give me a few good shots (hope they come out well)

Eating food has been a real challenge for me here. You just dont find veggie food and even if you do it would be some dull Salad or a cold Sandwich. Last night was no different. spent some good 45 minutes looking for dinner before once again settling for a Veggie sandwich which as expected was no great. I simply cannot understand why people eat food so bland here !!!

Hit the sack kind of early since I had to be up at 5 am to catch the 6 am van for the Yosemite trip … the trip today was a totally different deal. Really loved it … more about it later

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