San Francisco

I headed out to San Francisco to meet up with the hubby for the weekend.  He had been out there for a week long conference so I joined him for the Labor Day weekend.  Never been to San Francisco.  Once I got over my claustrophobia of the cramped feeling any city creates for me, I really enjoyed our stay.

First stop was Alcatraz, Travis the traveling trout likes to get in many photo ops at these locations.  He enjoyed it too.

We lucked out with the garden tour since they only do it twice a week.  It was neat to learn about the gardening that occurred when it was a military prison and then a federal prison.  The park service has been working to restore the gardens only since 2003.

Though it was the dry season the gardens were still very pretty with many blooms.

The view of San Francisco from the south side of the island was awesome.  A little foggy that day but it was nice none the less. 

After the garden tours we took the audio tour of the prison itself.  It was interesting and made me very glad to be a law abiding citizen!

They sure crammed in the prisoners back then and currently did so with the tourists!

A former prisoner has written a book about his experience there and was available for photos and autographs of the book.  He was 84 years old.  Should be an interesting read.

We later ventured up steep hills in the City to see Lombard street, the crookedest street.  It was crazy with tourists standing in the road to get pictures.  We got a good enough picture from the sidewalk.  What a mess!

The homes were gorgeous and the streets were steep.  My stick shift vehicle would have been a beast to drive in this town!

We went to the Buena Vista to enjoy the famous Irish Coffees.

And walked up and down streets, visited fisherman's wharf....

And of course enjoyed riding the cable cars!

It was a fun little excursion.  Some cable car drivers were nicer than others and made for a fun trip.  Others made us want to bail and take the next car.

China town was cool one evening and we had a great dinner.

I enjoyed the lanterns lit up at night.

We also walked along the bay to the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was very windy that day but no fog anywhere!

Travis enjoyed the bridge too. 

 

The next day we went on an open bus tour of the city.  One portion brought us over the entire bridge, still a windy day but another gorgeous one with no fog.

It was a short trip and we could see going to the area again to take in Redwoods and Yosemite sights.  No horse sightings though....guess the steep steets would be way too much on horse knees!  Glad to be home and able to see my pony again.