A prisoner's view

I was delighted to wake up to a sunrise and no fog...I even went for a run and it was pleasantly warm. After breakfast we went to Union Square and wandered along Market Street, one of the main shopping areas. This is a very attractive part of the city and it was full of people. Despite buying a 2 day pass on the hop on hop off bus the queues to get on the bus were so long, with over an hour wait that we decided to rather get an Uber taxi to the Japanese Gardens.

We have found that there are long queues for anything we wish to do, and it is getting a bit much. Yesterday I tried to buy Ghirardelli chocolate from the Ghirardelli chocolate shop three times and each time to queues were so long, snaking right out the shop into the shopping centre that I gave up. I suppose it is the summer holidays and a therefore is a busy time but I don't recall experiencing queues like this anywhere else.

The Japanese Garden were very attractive and interesting, and we hoped to visit the Science Academy but again the long queues put us off. The taxi ride there took us through some very beautiful parts of San Francisco where we saw such lovely houses. We walked back to our hotel and then later walked down to Pier 33 where we caught the ferry to Alcatraz. Alcatraz was very interesting, and well worth the visit. Thank goodness we had pre-booked our visit to Alcatraz as it is now fully booked until the end of August.

It got very windy in the afternoon and I was very cold on the ferry going to and from Alcatraz. However, the weather seems colder down at the water than in the main part of the city.

This is the view from Alcatraz towards San Francisco. It is only 1,4 miles from the city and apparently every New Year's Eve the prisoners could hear the parties on the city waterfront.

We are now about to go out for supper - if we get a table, as the restaurants won't take bookings and there are always queues at all the restaurants!