Left my heart with flowers in my hair.

The long delay in Portland cost us an afternoon in San Francisco. There was no sunlight left when we hit Market Street to explore a little and find some dinner.

The next day we went into tourist overdrive. A quick breakfast in North Beach and we hoofed it uphill to Coit Tower for a view of the bay and obligatory photos.

Obligatory view!

Down the stairs and across the park toward the bay we stopped for a shot of the tower. The sun was in just the wrong spot for a lot of the photos we tried to take. Shots from the bottom of the hill worked out a lot better.

Better photo!

Then began a day of buses. The first took us from downtown to the Golden Gate Park; three miles by a half mile of public parks in San Francisco. We covered a fraction of that, taking in the art museum, the tea garden and the arboretum, a bunch of fountains and the amphitheater.

Fountains, yes! Touristing to the max!

Not that we went into any of these attractions, just cruised past at high speed and confirmed they were there, snapping photos as we went. The weather was on side; cool in the shade, warm in the sun, very dry. Across the road from the park we caught another bus straight up to the Golden Gate Bridge, which I had driven across on the last trip but never really set foot on.

Blue skies, red steel.

The bridge was very popular with families and visitors for the holidays; it was the last Saturday before Christmas. That was important, though I didn't realise it at the time.

A change of buses at Fort Mason and we began the long crawl back to Union Square. The bus took us through Chinatown and the funky tunnel which goes under the hills of San Francisco. To be honest we could have walked faster than the bus was moving. The traffic was so heavy we began to question what was happening ahead.

The last Saturday before Christmas is, as it happens, the second-busiest shopping day of the year in the USA. There were so many people in Union Square, and on Market Street, and in the stores, and on the street corners, and just... everywhere, that I do not believe there were any people anywhere else in San Francisco.

Though I hate to exaggerate.

Ali handled the crowds better than I did, and even steered me to do a little shopping (good news Rob I got you some undies).

That night we decided to cross into SoMa and try the food and beers at the Thirsty Bear. Tapas and a tasting board was a great combination, and in particular Ali really enjoyed the Panda Bear, flavoured with vanilla beans and cocoa nibs.

Mmm beers

The next day was street-car day. All destinations we visited were on the street-car route. Inside the Ferry Building we grabbed some coffee from Blue Bottle (good) and an Italian doughnut from a woman who was the definition of San Francisco attitude (not great).

Mum I didn't get this for you. Sorry.

The street-car took us all the way up to Fisherman's Wharf and the weather was wonderful again.

More blue skies...

We braved the tourists to get more photos on the bay and a little of the vitamin D we had missed so much in Portland.

Ali gettin' some sun.

The restaurants and duck tours and other shouted invitations did nothing for us. In fact there was only one must-see for us at Fisherman's Wharf - the Sea Lions. And they were putting on a show. Hundreds of them lay across Pier 39, sunning themselves, climbing onto boats and yelling at each other. While we watched a couple chased one another in the water and leaped onto the back of a yacht.

Sea lions do not respect personal property

The streetcar went all the way down to The Castro, where we joined the line outside Ike's Place for what we were told was the best sandwich we would ever eat. Thirty minutes in line but we were not disappointed. The food was so good we completely forgot to take a photo of it. Instead we sat in a park around the corner and enjoyed our lunch. The only mistake we had made was ordering a sandwich each. One was more than enough for two people. As it was, we wound up finishing them for dinner.

View from the Castro all the way to the Ferry Building

A coffee (or hot-chocolate) in the Castro and we were done. Ali stopped on Market Street for a few final goes through the shops and we were all San Franciscoed out. The next day the crowds would turn out for the last ever regular-season game at Candlestick Park, but we would already be in Texas.

San Francisco accessories.

We spent a day just wandering around San Francisco.  Hamburgers were eaten at the university campus, photos were taken of bridges.  Eventually, a cold beer was had at Fisherman's Wharf, at the Eagle, where the Skeptic and I had eaten lunch the previous day.

There was a loud noise from the pier, and we all wound up leaning over the balcony to see what the fuss was.

Seals make heaps of noise.

On the walk back up to Coit tower, there were a bunch of Americans taking photos of flowers on the hills.  I thought I'd better try to fit in.

I have no idea what this flower is.

This was the only night I went out in San Francisco, and I had a great time.  We went to some bar I can't remember the name of, drank local beers, made formations out of our piles of American change and met a friend's doppelganger in the deli next door.

We are not even remotely ashamed about this.

San Francisco was great fun and I want to go back.

The streets of San Francisco.

We decided to do a walking tour of San Francisco because we love hills and hate ourselves.  Our guide took us straight up Nob Hill to look at the cathedral.

I don't know how it can be a Cathedral without a bishop.

Grace Cathedral is modeled on Notre Dame, and would be a perfect replica were it not for the lack of Americans taking photos.  On the steps of the Cathedral we were told the history of San Francisco which, like many of the European cities I had visited a couple of months ago, was dominated by a fire.  This trend carried throughout the tour, as SF considers itself to be a very European city.

Next up we hit the Cable Car Museum, where we could see the huge wheels which run the city's single remaining cable car.

What a big wheels.

Then we headed into little Italy.  Outside the beat poetry museum a random octogenarian, not in any way associated with the tour, stopped to tell us about the history of the area; about the division of the city between the Chinese and the Italians, the way the mob cleaned out all the pimps from downtown SF and the eventual gentrification of the entire city.  It was the most interesting thing I heard on the tour.

Next, we got to take a look at some of the definitive buildings which make up the San Francisco skyline.

Which one do you like better?

Then it was back up hill to Coit Tower, which gave us a commanding view of the city.

Add caption

Our guide took us back down towards Fisherman's Wharf.  We went again the next day.

A day in The Rock.

The bright California sun held no heat.  We huddled on the bow of the ferry, watching the island grow on the horizon.  Through the haze of not quite fog, not quite smog the Golden Gate bridge hung like a beacon.

Where we were going, a lot of people never came back.

It needs theme music.

"There's a real history here," the ranger told us.  "You can see it in the layers of the rock, painted on the walls."

He was right, it was everywhere; the litter of the soldiers, the scratchings of prisoners, the paint of protests.

"They made a lot of good movies here," the Skeptic said afterwards.

He was right, too.

The many stages of Alcatraz history are obvious as you disembark.

Audio tours walked us through the prison.  Voices from the past told stories which brought life to the stones, made sense of an environment we couldn't otherwise understand.  Stories of what men had done outside this place, ending up here.  Stories of what they had done while they wilted in these walls.

The recreation yard.

In the dank corners, behind heavy bars are the stories which never escaped the dark.  The places where men had nothing left but their sanity and held that tight.

The Skeptic shows off the size of the hole.

The whole the marines used to bomb inmates during the Battle of Alcatraz.

And on the horizon, the unreachable city, deceptively close.  The bright sun made a lie of the autumn chill.  How far could a man swim, we wondered, before the water froze his bones, and the cold sucked the air from his lungs? How far would he make it across the bay he could never escape?

There's quite a good view of the San Francisco skyline from the officer's quarters.

Yet there was colour here too, colour brought by the men who escaped this place.  Some escaped through paint and canvas, words and paper.  Some escaped by steel and broken stone, determination.  Both had their place in the history of these rocks.

One of the cells made famous by the film Escape from Alcatraz.

And we left.  These days people do.

Of ducks and fog and forest

The next few days all ran together on my camera, so I'm just going to cover them all in one post.  We went to the Oregon Ducks v Washington Huskies game in Eugene and had a great day.  The people we'd met in Portland were able to send us along to a McMenamins around the corner from the stadium, so we were well fed.

Every now and then the road just disappears into cloud.

A great day was had, watching the Ducks build momentum and eventually demolish the Huskies.  We spent the afternoon 'tailgating' with the people of Oregon.

The next morning we headed for Eureka, taking an amazing drive to the Californian coast.  Redwood forests are spectacular.  We drove in and out of cloud all day and eventually descended to the Pacific Ocean.

"Is there a corner coming up?" "Probably."

And then, one Monday morning, we came down a stretch of highway and saw the Golden Gate Bridge around the corner.

Oh hey, I know that bridge.

The Talk had recommended a great hostel in the middle of downtown San Francisco.  The Skeptic and I took off for a run to the top of Lombard Street, hoping to get some photos of the sunset.  We were too late.