San Fransisco (11th August)

Well this morning we arrived in San Fransisco - to the sound of fog horns. Damn this place has a lot of fog!

Our tour today included Alcatraz and a trip across the Golden Gate Bridge.

It was quite cool for a 'summer' day here in San Fransisco - 17ish degrees C with some really cold winds!

Ok - gonna bitch a little bit about a few things.. the tour today was the WORST organised I've ever experienced.. we waited half an hour at the dock.. then when we got to the ferry to Alcatraz we got told that there would be an hour's wait.. joy.. then on the way back after the trip across the golden gate bridge we got dumped at what could best be described as a 'tourist trap' for an hour and fifteen minutes! (I mean hell.. a hotdog was US$5 and a hamburger was US$10!!). One other thing that's really annoying us is washing our clothes - there are only TWO washing machines and dryers on each deck (yes, only TWO for hundreds of passengers) - and one of the ones in the laundry near us has been broken since the first week of the cruise - let me tell you, there have been some heated arguments about washing on this cruise. It may be ok for a 2 week cruise to have so few washing machines - for a 75 day cruise you think they'd organise something better (maybe have longer laundry hours or a cheaper laundry service??!?!)

Anyway.. enough bitching.. back to the day..

Alcatraz was an interesting trip, we actually arrived on the 74th anniversary of the prison's opening so there were quite a few special events happening. We did the audio tour of the main cell block and walked around a bit - it's an interesting place to visit, but I definately wouldn't have wanted to stay here in the past :)

The trip across the Golden Gate was good - even at 2pm, the fog was still really thick - I'll upload a few photos if I can get some decent internet access in Victoria (our next stop) or Vancouver.

The highlight of today was the sail out of the harbour under the bridge.. very impressive, lots of photos of that too!

Our next stop is Victoria, and right after that Vancouver!