San Francisco

San Francisco is awesome. One of the best cities we've been to. After dropping the hire car off at the airport we headed downtown to hit Chinatown for some dinner. Chinatown was busy and quite dirty compared with the rest of the city. We visited some cool bars in San Francisco over the 3 days we were there - we watched a couple of bands at the Boom Boom Room before heading back to our cheap, dated hotel. Saying that though it was still good enough. There are quite a lot of homeless and people with mental health issues in San Francisco, and we did feel sorry for them, but a bit nervous in some parts of the city at night. It seemed that the government doesn't do enough for these people. We also got to go on the famous cable car and even got to use the brakes down California Avenue. It was hilarious, as Maddie was using the brakes one conductor jumped out to get his and the driver's lunch, the busiest street in San Francisco and we hold the traffic up! You had to be there, but was funny as hell! The one thing I wanted to do here was visit Alcatraz and so we booked two tickets on a cruise and I dragged Maddie along. The sun was out and the ride over was amazing, we got to see the Golden Gate Bridge we drove over days before from the bay. Alcatraz looked imposing sitting in the middle of the bay and the closer we got, the bigger it got. It was so cool to go in the prison and see the cells in which Al Capone and other big criminals had spent there days. The exercise yard where Clint Eastwood filmed Escape From Alcatraz. The whole experience was so cool and the views back to San Francisco bristling in the sun was awesome. Once back on the mainland we walked the 600 plus steps to Coit tower. This 210ft tower was built in 1933 as a memorial to a rich lady called Lillie Hitchcock Coit. The views from the top of the bay and city was phenomenal, a real highlight of San Francisco.Read more