We awoke early, as normally seems to be the case when you head to the West coast, must be the time difference. After the morning routine and Celia's Skype chat with her mother and finally able to hand over the card, with a fake Tiffany gift certificate (which I would make good later in the trip) we headed down to breakfast, it was OK but nothing memerable.
After breakfast we headed out of the hotel and started to walk arround the Embercadero to Pier 33, We already had our tickets so could get into the queue straight away, we were on the 9:10am and just saw the 8:45 first boat head off as we got there.
At arround the same time, another tourist arrived who had booked on to the 8:45 and was told to go to the ticket office to rebook, so be careful not to miss you boarding time, which is a 10 minutes before the cruise time. The cruise includes being subjected to a photo in front of a green screen with them photoshopping a picture of Alcatraz in by the time you head back. It takes about 20 mins to cruise accross to the Island, and when you get there you have an inital guidence talk explaining that no food or drink but bottled water can be taken beyond the dock area.
After the steep walk up the hill, we got to the Cell block and were issued with our little audio devices and headphones for the tour. It is facinating, the size of the cells are so small and bare, and the stories of the officers and criminals bring the place to life.
Having the personal audio does allow you to pause when you want and spend time taking it in, I think that the Recreation yard where as you walk in you can see the bridge and the realisation that the rest of the world is so close but if you were there to far to get to...
Obviously we had to lock Celia up on her birthday.
and these were the worst of the worst cells as they apeared to be in darkness almost all the time.
Alcatraz is a MUST DO for any trip to San Francisco, it is very emotional and powerful to see this Prison.
After spending slightly more time there than we expected we got the 10:55 boat back to San Francisco and decided to walk down the rest of the Embarcadero down to the Ferry Building to see if we could get into the Slanted Door for lunch. The build up to the America's cup was progressing with lots of posters and a stage being built, but still a slight somber mood with the death of Andrew Simpson just a week before.
The Ferry Building was a wonderful assortment of food shops and resturants, from Google Maps it had looked like Slanted Door was at the far end but we found out that we had walked passed it once we found a guide map, but that did allow us to have a good explore as we walked back to the northern end. Asking at Slanted Door we were told it woudl be 1 hour wait for a table for 2, which with a very nice meal planned for later that day, seemed a long wait and woudl mean a very late lunch. Instead we had just seen "Out the Door" which was a quick service place served out of the Slanted Door kitchen, so we tried that instead. Good choice, the food was really good and we managed to get a stand up table as that is the only issue, lack of anywhere to sit as it was 12:30 on a Friday and the office lunch break was in full swing. After lunch we grabbed some ice cream and gots some supplies for later in the week (Apples & Chocolate) and started to plan how to get back to the hotel to collect the car for the drive to Napa.
Looking at the map and some idea of the hills, we decided to walk up Market Street, which seems to divide 2 different grids running at angles to each other. Walking arround a city gives you a great feeling for a City and we both decided that we liked the vibe of San Francisco, apart from the beggers and homeless which seemed more than we had seen before on trips to the USA.
We made it up to the Powell Cable Car turntable and the queue was long but we thought we had enough time, and you can't go to San Francisco and not ride the Cable car.
I stayed in the queue as Celia headed off to find out where to get tickets, which were quickly found and we got tickets and got on a Powell and Hyde cable car which would terminate just by our hotel. We went to try and sit on the outside bit, but were just a couple of people to late so had to stand, but after a while you get your balance and it is fun...
Back at the hotel, a quick change and we were walk down the road to the Avis office to pick up our first car for the trip, this was the quick rental as we were returning it tomorrow morning.
We had planned to leave at 3pm, but waiting for the Cable Car had delayed us so it was 3:30 when we headed of from the Fisherman's Wharf area towards the Golden gate bridge, but we had not allowed for Friday rush hour starting early and we crawled in traffic on and off until we turned on to the Napa Valley highway 29, when we finally started to make some time up, finally arriving only 5 mins after our reservation, and not the 30 mins late that it had looked like at one point.
We had managed to get a reservation for the Resturant at Meadowood, which is 1 of only 2 Three star Michellin resturants in the San Francisco area. And the meal was perfect. It is hard to describe this kind of food, and it was not the kind of place where you can take photos of the food as each course is brought out, but we do have the menus so I can say we had (Celia's Options in Brackets);
- Whipped yogurt pickled plum shiso [Cuttlefish bean broth cumin]
- aji cured in green tomato artichoke almond
- potatoes cooked in beeswax assorted sorrels
- sour pasta borage geoduck clam dill [Scallop tapioca cauliflower]
- daylily spot prawn caviar
- cod peas mustard spring onions
- bouillon of roasted meats
- chicken whelk turnip green juniper
- pork rhubarb celery
- cheddar malt caramel broccoli brown butter [Green house salad]
- koji sorbet unripe apricots
- chocolate cherry tart
- a candy dish
After that wonderful meal we started the drive back and with much less traffic we were back quickly and parked back in the same car park space as the car was in when we collected it. The hotel was just a 5 min walk away and we were safely in bed with plans to cycle back over the bridge tomorrow.
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