Alcatraz, Haight Street and Twin Peaks in San Francisco, CA

All of the years I lived in California, and especially for the small amount of time I lived in San Francisco, I wanted to visit Alcatraz and never did. It was always the cost that kept me away, but when you're on vacation you expect to pay for things. I did visit California a few years back and still didn't see it, but I vowed that the next time I visited I HAD to see it. So I did!

I read that the tours sold out so it was best to purchase the tickets in advance. We did, and we almost regretted it. We just barely made it on board before leaving! I had to run with my bag (with my laptop in it) slamming against my back..not fun. I would've been very disappointed had we missed the boat.

It wasn't the nicest day out, and it sprinkled here and there, but since most of the guided audio tour was inside, it worked out okay.

Here's a picture of leaving San Francisco on the ferry.





And here's arriving at Alcatraz..finally.





Walking up to the building where the tour begins.





Here is the recreation yard, part of the cell house, an empty library (sad!), and a guard station.





Not all of the cells were in such bad shape, but this one really caught my eye.





And apparently the kitchen had those black borders where the knives were meant to be so that they could tell if one went missing.





I decided to take a picture of some etchings..





And then the tour ended and we started back to the line to get on the ferry. I liked the fact that you could go at your own pace and explore on your own if you'd like. If I ever went again, I'd like a human guided tour at night. Reminds me of the Winchester Mystery house when I lived in San Jose. I did the morning tour, and I heard they had a night tour and I found that interesting.. Something about night tours!





After Alcatraz, we decided to go to Haight St.





And from there we were close to Twin Peaks and I'd never been, so my friend directed me. I didn't realize how low the clouds covering the city were until we went up there. It was incredibly foggy so we had to wait for some of the sky to clear to get some pictures.

Japantown in San Francisco

Today was a day of visiting Daly City to have my favorite taco's in the whole world (so far), visiting Emperor Norton's grave, again, and going to Japantown.

Conservatory of Flowers

Went to the Conservatory Of Flowers in San Francisco today. That was nice. Took lot's of pictures of flowers, and TRIED to take some of butterflies. I kept having to go back and delete pictures because I kept running out of space. I didn't bring my laptop, and I don't have the "x drive" yet, cause I'm getting it for christmas. Now I'm falling behind with my photo page. Haven't put any sunset photo's up (I don't think), or these new ones. I've got work to do, but I don't know where I want to start. See pictures below.

San Francisco Zoo

Lovely day at the zoo. Was a bit hot at moments, but ten times better than San Jose. I guess going to San Francisco on really hot days is a good idea.

So my photo friend was nice. We spent from 10am to 4pm checking the whole zoo out. I took over 100 pictures. It's going to take me forever to go through them all, but it'll be fun. While we were taking pictures, these people were interviewing this lady. All I got from it was they were interviewing her because she was into digital photography.

Later on we were taking pictures of...rhino's maybe? They walked over to my photo friend and asked him if it's digital, he says yes. They ask if we're together, and if I shoot digital too, I say yes. So they ask if they can interview us. We decide to, they ask us a lot of questions, and I get into talking about my "photo adventures" group, which they perked up when I mentioned. Then after they were initially wanting to talk to him because his camera looked more impressive (yes this is why), the interviewer seemed more interested in me, my S50, and my idea. Well, it made me feel like I was doing something, and getting somewhere. And the interview went really well. They gave us $10 each for the interview.

After the interview we went on to take many more pictures...yes...much editing and posting I must do. What a time consuming project this will be. I hope the pictures came out as good as I think they did. I used a tripod for all of them, except the first few.
Photo adventure 2...a success...