Category Archives: USA

United States of America

Our Last Day in San Fran

Janis Joplin Street art in Haight Street

Today we first headed out to Haight street to checkout the murals (graffiti street art), there was a very cool one with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

Then we walked into beautiful San Francisco park, there was a nice memorial section at the start, the day before we had heard there is a section of the park with bison in it so we taxied it to the bison section, only to find two sad lonely bison …

San Francisco memorial park

San Francisco memorial park

Next up we headed to the Golden Gate Welcome Centre, for some happy snaps before we headed up to walk on the Golden Gate Bridge, an amazing structure with magnificent views of San Francisco Bay. We headed back down towards the visitor centre pausing along the way to take in some of the many informational displays about the bridge history and construction.

The ladies at the information desk in the GG welcome centre told us about George Lucas’s offices just a short free shuttle ride away, so on we hopped and a few minutes later we were out the front of the Lucas Films offices in Presidio. There’s a Yoda fountain out the front and you’re allowed to walk into the reception area to take photos with the Star Wars statues … so of course Steve made the most of it.

Then with our tummies rumbling we headed to Sessions at the Presidio, a really nice micro brewery, with some good food, we had a great late lunch and a couple of excellent beers.

With our bellies full we headed out to Lombard street, (the funky one with the downhill zig zag), sadly our tourist map was not to scale and we soon found our legs alone would not be sufficient so we hailed a taxi who was kind enough to wait while Faiza took some photos, then we headed back to our hotel to sort ourselves for the next phase of our adventure.

Looooonnnngg Day Trip To Yosemite

Early start to our day with a 6am pickup from our hotel, two pit stops and approximately 4 hours drive later our bus stopped in Yosemite National Park.

We headed for a walk down Tuolumne Grove to see the sequoia trees up close, they were massive!

Back on the bus we then traveled down into Yosemite Valley, truly epic views of some of nature’s best. We had some lunch and a couple of hours exploring then it was time to head back.

Arrived back in our hotel about 10pm … huge day … with some magnificent sights:

Escape to Alcatraz

We started our first full day in San Francisco by walking to Pier 33 to catch our boat to Alcatraz Island (make sure to book your tickets well in advance or you might miss out).

Alcatraz Island
Alcatraz Island from the boat

It was a magnificent sunny day as we boarded our boat for the quick roughly 15 minute cruise across the calm waters of San Francisco Bay.

On our arrival after a quick induction by Ranger John (as it’s a National Park area) we headed up to view the quick video introduction/ history of the island. We learnt that one of the early uses of the island was a fort for protection of San Francisco during the gold rush years, then later as a prison that housed the likes of Al Capone amongst others and then later after the prison closed it was a site that Native Americans took over and held as Indian Land. The Occupation of Alcatraz Island was led by the Native American group, Indians of All Tribes (IAT). The take-over lasted 14-months and ended when the Indians were forcibly removed by the federal government.

USA and Canada … Here we come

So we found a 14 day Highlights of the Rockies and luxury Alaska Cruise with flights deal that was too good to ignore … over a year ago.

We were fortunate to have a couple of good friends that will be joining us!

We tacked on a few days in front in San Francisco and a few days on the end in Seattle … well you only live once …

Not long to go now.