San Francisco

Even Ghandi visits San Francisco's Ferry Building.

The fisherman enjoy the view off the Bay Bridge from one of the many piers.

I spent my first afternoon just having a wander around and enjoying the variety of buildings in buildings - Transamerica Pyramid is the tallest skyscraper in SF - pretty easy to spot which one it is!!

Then there was the street of sex clubs and strip joints!!

China Town in SF is the biggest outside of Asia and the oldest in North America and is the place to go for nice but cheap Chinese food and tourist tat!!

At night the city is pretty with all the buildings and lights.

The famous SF Cable Cars - when they get to the end of the street they get turned around and sent back up the hill!

The sun was out so I took a walk over The Golden Gate Bridge which must be one of the USAs most famous landmarks.

Fort Point sits just under the Golden Gate Bridge though work began on this in the 1850's as part of the US defense system to protect the Gold in California.

These two nice workers are part of the team who continually paint and maintain the Bridge - they stopped and offered to take my photo and after we got chatting and they loved Scotland they gave me a rivet that had just been removed from the bridge and was part of the original construction in 1935 - certainly one of the more unusual souvenirs from my trip - how many people can say they own a piece of the Golden Gate Bridge??

About 11 men died during the construction of the bridge and sadly it has become the number one place in the USA, as well as one of the top (if not the top) place in the world for suicides.

There is a pretty coastal walk from the Golden Gate Bridge along to Bakers Beach - well it goes much further but that's as far as I got before sunset. Some really nice views and it was nice to catch the sunset at the bridge.

I liked this wall where the murals were in 3D...

Even the Cable Cars are decorated for christmas.

SF is the setting in a lot of movies and TV shoes and though I passed a few film sets I never spotted anyone famous!

My first visit to Pier 39 on my way to catch the ferry to Alcatraz.

Alcatraz AKA The Rock is 10 minute boat ride from the San Francisco piers and started out as a lighthouse then a military fort before becoming one of the world's most secure prisons.

The guards and their families used to live on the island and the kids would be boated to school in San Francisco - you would think it would be a pretty bleak place to grow up but the memoirs of those kids who lived their are full of happy times and they never came into contact with the prisoners.

The cellblock.

Even in the galley kitchen where some prisoners were responsible for cooking security was tightly controlled - the shape of all the knives was drawn onto the wall where they hanged so it was easy for gaurds to see if any were missing.

Feliz waits to see if he will get any vistitors!!! By the time I left him on one side of the screen and walked around to take his photo there was a line of people taking his photo as they thought he was part of the museum - funny :-)

No flat screen TV's and video games to entertain the prisoners so many took up arts and crafts to kill the long boring hours ........

Although only a short distance from the mainland it is the dangerous current that makes escape by swimming almost impossible from here.

Despite the unlikeliness of escaping from Alcatraz there were 14 recorded attempts to escape from here during the 29 years it acted as a Fedral Prison. The most detailed escape attempt was carried out by 3 prisoners in 1962 - using a metal spoon and other items they chiseled their way through the mouldy wall at the vent into the unsupervised utility tunnel behind the cells and then climbed through ventilation shafts. They left papermache dummies with hair stolen from the barber shop in their beds to give them more time. They then used a stolen raincoats and other items to built a raft - parts of which were later found on nearby Angel Island. The official report says that the men drowned in the Bay but no bodies have ever been found and their names still appear on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list.

In 1969 after the prison was closed a group of Native Americans occupied the island claiming that under the old treaties it belonged to them as abandoned Federal Land. The occupation lasted over 19 months with many more natives from different tribes coming to the Island. Although they did not win the rights to Alcatraz this occupation is seen as being an important part of the Indian movement which eventually led to land settlements with the Federal Government.

This was one of a few airships I saw passing over SF tourist attractions - pretty cool way to see a city.