Alcatraz

Our first full day in San Francisco.

We handed back our hire car today. After 5 weeks and 5702 miles it was a little sad to have to hand 'Buck' (as we effectionately nicknamed him) back. Emma did a marvelous job driving all but 1 mile. I had a go driving in one of the national parks, just to get use out of the $300 additional driver charge. Most expensive mile ever.

When we had made the booking we chose to hand it back at San Francisco airport, however we twigged yesterday that it was 20 miles away and there were closer National depots. A quick call to National to check that we could change drop off location revealed it would cost $350 to change it, we decided to drive to the airport.

After handing back the car we headed into down and down to the pier where the Alcatraz sailings sail from. We were a little gutted yesterday when we visited the Alcatraz website showed that all tickets were booked for the next 2 weeks. One of the main reasons we were in San Francisco and it looked like we weren't going to get to go. Depressing.

But as we enquired was there any other way to get on the island (there isn't normally) there was a man who had 2 spare tickets and needed to get rid of them. Sheer luck, we were in the right place at the right time. And he sold them to us at $20 each instead of the normal price of $26.

Alcatraz is amazing. I've seen so many movies set there that I felt like I'd already been. Very eerie, especially in the windy and misty conditions that covered San Francisco today. Incidentally those misty and cloudy conditions didn't make too good a photograph setting, may try and get another one from the shore in a couple of days.