Alcatraz

Today we did the Alcatraz Cruise & Tour. It's a tourist hot spot to say the least, but well worth the trip. There is much to see on the island including a video of the history of the island dating back to the 1800s & the gold rush days. The Island is also a rookery for sea birds as it was before Europeans trashed it to build a fortress.

The main part of the Alcatraz tour is the self guided audio tour of the cell block. It was very interesting & they have actually done it quite well. The shot above was as close to a picture without tourists as I could get.

One of the interesting parts of the tour was the cells for solitary confinement. This photo was taken of such a cell, but it obviously doesn't tell the story. Inside these cells it is pitch black! Hence the nickname, "The Hole".

Something that hadn't occurred to me about Alcatraz until the tour, was the tantalising reminder that freedom & the vibrant city of San Francisco lies only a mile away from the prison island. The prisoners could see it clearly night & day, & could even here to sounds on some nights. No wonder they wanted to escape so badly. There is no evidence anyone ever did, although three guys were never found. Legend has it that they fled to Mexico.

And the prison had this brilliant old fire truck. Apparently $90k USD to restore! It does look a treat though.
Wouldn't the wiggles be jealous?!

After the Alcatraz tour, we headed to the Cable car Museum. It is part museum & part operating power house for the cable cars. Yes, I finally figured it out! All the cable car lines (effectively there are 4) are powered by these 4 electric motors in the power house. There are 4 continuous cable loops that run around the city and all come back to the same point.
The museum explained how it all worked & had some great little exhibits. I guess it played to my mechanical engineering background. Very glad I had a look.

Peir 39

San Francisco's merchandising & tourist trap No. 1. Fisherman's Wharf & Pier 39. It is just so corny to describe. Fisherman's Wharf is all about selling T-shirts & Fridge magnets on one side of the road & dodgy food vendors on the Bay side. Pier 39 is much the same but more up market merchandising stores & a bunch of slightly better places to eat.
The Island pictured isn't actually an Island. It is a floating mock up of an island. As the pontoon rocks, so does the light house & the palm trees.

Pier 39 (below) does have one saving grace, it's resident sea lion population. I have no idea why they have taken up residence here, but they seem happy enough. It is very surprising to see them so close to so much human activity. That is Alcatraz in the background.

The seals seem to sleep a lot, but you wonder how considering how much squabbling goes on in the colony for real estate.

We took a cruise from Pier 39 out around the bay including an up close & personal look at the Golden Gate bridge & Alcatraz. So we walked the bridge the previous day & we did the Alcatraz tour today. Didn't matter. We got a different perspective of those two land marks & had a look around the other parts of the bay.

Toward the Cruise we also got up close to Alcatraz! It's a sinister looking place. More on that later.

After the Cruise, we had a better look at Pier 39 & had some lunch. The only place that was worth a good look was the Wyland Gallery. (It's more of a sales outlet really). This guy is good! He does coloured bronze sculptures, paintings & photos.
The photos don't do the pieces justice, particularly the one below.

After the bay cruise and the nosey around Pier 39, we caught the bus up to Telegraph hill. The hill has a strange looking tower on it called Coit Tower (Strange name as well. Named after the lady who commissioned it I think). The tower is fairly uninteresting, but the view from the top of the hill is pretty nice. You can see most of the city & bay, pretty much unobstructed. The following pictures tell the story. This one is of the Bay Bridge.

Below is an arty shot of the bay bridge I took from Telegraph hill.

The Bay Bridge should attract more attention than the Golden gate bridge when you compare them side by side. The Bay Bridge is longer, taller & carries more traffic than the Golden Gate. I suspect that the Golden Gate is the centre of attention because it's RED! (I would think that the fact that it was built at the entrance to the bay & quite a bit earlier has something to do with it too.) The Bay Bridge carries it's traffic on two separate levels as opposed to the Golden Gate's single level.

I have already posted a photo of Lombard street up close, but this is a shot from Telegraph Hill. You will notice the wiggly street just to the right of centre of this shot.

This could be anywhere in San Francisco's CBD. It just happens to be the street that leads up to Telegraph Hill.

Below is the Fairmount Hotel on Nob Hill. Nob Hill is pretty much the highest point of San Francisco's CBD. There is a park square in the middle & it's surrounded on 3 sides by a bunch of very swank, very expensive hotels. The Western side is bordered by Grace Cathedral (See next entry).

Below is Grace Cathedral. If I was in Europe (Paris in particular) I could swear that this is Notre-Dame, but cleaner, with no scaffold & seems to be lacking just a touch of intricacy in the stone work. Even the gargoyles at the top of the spire look the same, but less broken. (Not pictured) The only thing that appears to be missing is the flying buttresses.
The Yanks like to copy stuff from Europe so they don't have to travel out of the US to see it! (eg. The White House, which looks like the Popes joint or St Paul's in London.) Idiots! No wonder they think Kangaroos jump around in our back yards
P.S. before you write to me & tell me you DO have kangaroos jumping around in your back yard; I know but you get my drift.

Western Gulls.

Seagulls in Australia annoy me nearly as much as pigeons. They are noisy scavengers that crap everywhere. Northern California seems to have an extra level of trouble in that respect. These ones are louder, more aggressive & there are more of them.

Oh and another thing. THEY'RE HUGE!!


They are at least twice the size/weight of you run of the mill Aussie gull. The photo doesn't show the perspective, but believe me, they are big! And what's worse, Alcatraz Island is now a protected rockery for the blighters!

They have a habit of getting themselves into your photos as well. I've had at least two shots spoiled by these guys.

The Golden Gate Bridge

We rode the cable cars today (among other things). The trick is to hang off the sides and have a good look around & in front (have a look in the photo to see what I mean. They are actually a pretty efficient way to get around the city.

I had originally thought that they were electric powered with a 3rd rail in the middle to conduct the electricity. And why were they called cable cars? Turns out that there is a slot in the road with metal covers that conceal a metal wire rope that is pulled by some unseen mechanism. (I assume under the roads somewhere. Haven't figure that one out yet.) The cable car itself actually has no motor of any kind, it just grabs onto the rope & gets hauled around by the cable.

They are very interesting, lots of fun & apparently the only ones operational in the world.

The San Francisco F-Line Street Cars (We Aussies would call them Trams). These are a bit odd because the City Of San Francisco has bought old trams from around the world & run them here as a tourist attraction. Consequentially, there is a mixture of very different looking trams running the same route. They almost seem out of place at times.
Riding the Trams to & from Fisherman's Wharf & Pier 39 seemed like a good idea at the time, but they seem to get chockers full of tourists & local weirdos! Yesterday (Monday, Remembrance day) the Tram was loaded & we thought it was just because of the long weekend. Nup! This morning was just as crowded and included some dead set freaks. It's also quite slow & we've found it quicker to get around on the Cable Cars. Besides, you can't hang off the side of the tram.

Lombard St

This street would be fairly recognizable to pretty much anyone who has seen a movie based in San Fran. If you owned a house in this street, you would have to be filthy rice & more than a bit of a show off. Not my thing.

 The Golden Gate Bridge

This is the classic been there & done that shot in San Francisco.
Yesterday (Mon) we walked across the bridge. Quite a hike & the wind coming into the San Francisco bay was bitter (even though it's summer here). The strangest thing I noticed was the fog/cloud coming in from the sea, seemed to dissipate almost straight after it passed over the bridge.

Saucalito

After we had walked across the bridge, rather than brave the icy breeze back to San Fran, we walked another mile down the road to Saucalito. It's a seaside town/suburb on the far side of the bay from San Fran. There are no high rise & has some very pretty houses & shop fronts. The house below is a fairly good example. Sausalito is quite touristy, but well worth a look.

Off to San Francisco

Finally we got away from the tourist trap of Honolulu this morning. It had been a good stay, but we were done.

The five hour flight to San Francisco was uneventful, which in light of recent events, is a good thing. United Airlines do have an extra bit of leg room in the Boeing 767 which makes all the difference on the longer flights.

We arrived safe & sound and on time in San Francisco around 3.30pm. (although the driver of the shuttle van nearly made us sick with his on & off accelerator technique that made the ride more like a rocking ship than a car.
The hotel is nice & has the Frisco feel to it. It's in a good position & has a nice view (below).
We already purchased a week Tram pass ($24 US) that should sort out our transport for the 5 days we are here. We rode the Cable Car up Powell Street straight after purchasing the tickets. It's very cool!

More on that tomorrow with some photos after we have done some exploring & taken some pics.
This place has a really good vibe compared with Hawaii, but you do have to be a bit careful with beggars & potential for pick pockets & bag snatchers. It's not too bad, but you just have to be careful.

Manoa Falls

Today we hiked up to Manoa Falls, just up behind Waikiki. You can catch the bus up to the start of the trail & walk about 30 minutes or so to reach the falls. It was surprisingly low in tourists considering how pretty the walk was. The only down side was the mud on the trail. Maybe that explains the lack of tourists.

The trail leading to Manoa falls is almost worth the walk on its own. There were about a dozen shots like this that we could have taken along the trail. This area is what I expected Hawaii to look like, & a fair chunk of Oahu is, I guess. It's just hard to get at.

North Shore

Away from the tourist nightmare of Honolulu & Waikiki, there is actually a good part of Oahu. We did the island circuit bus trip that runs up through the centre of the island (past the pineapple plantations) up to the North shore town of Haleiwa, along the water front and big name surf breaks such as Waimea bay, Three Tables, the Banzi Pipeline & Sunset Beach. (Three Tables pictured below). The bus continues along the shoreline to Windward. The final leg cuts straight over the mountain range to Honolulu. It's a really pretty journey & well worth the 4 hours on the bus. Unfortunately we didn't get much chance to hop off the bus & take photos. (Mental note: Next time hire a car to sight see.)

We broke up the 4 hr bus trip with a snorkel at Sharks Cove and Three Tables near Waimea Bay. Not a good place to snorkel in winter when the swell is running at 5m plus, but in summer, it's like a mill pond. Sharks Cove is a marine park and the fish life is therefore excellent. There are similar species to those I have seen on the Barrier Reef back in Oz. Many are slightly different and pretty variants. The only down side was the large number of people snorkeling. I think we arrived early enough to beat the main crowds.

I took about 35 photos with a disposable underwater camera while I was snorkeling at Sharks Cove. The results aren't brilliant because of the low resolution and the fact that colour disappears the deeper you get under water. Red goes first and Green last.

This is one of my better shots. It is a member of the Surgeonfish family, but I don't know which one exactly.

Most of the Trevally in Australia are pretty much silver with little other colour other than black spots, or the odd bit of yellow. In the true Hawaiian style of flashy colours, the Blue Finned Trevally found around the Hawaiian islands are covered in iridescent Blue markings & a spattering of yellow strips. I saw a few while I was snorkeling at Sharks Cove & Three Tables (not little ones either).

Windward

Across the range from Honolulu is the town of Windward. It has a much better feel to it than the tourist strip on the other side of the island. The scenery is such a contrast to that of Waikiki. The mountains are high & shear, and the vegetation is incredibly green. They seem to get heaps more rain on the eastern side of the island due to the prevailing wind & the steepness of the range. Unfortunately the Windward shopping centre got in the road of a great photo, but it was the best I could do.

Diamond Head

Diamond head rises above Waikiki & you can walk up it an about 45 minutes. It isn't an arduous climb, but it takes some doing. The crater of the extinct volcano (above) is the start point of the climb.

 The view from the top of Diamond head is pretty spectacular. That is Gotham city (Waikiki) in the background & Pearl harbour is in the distance behind.

Pearl Harbour & Dole Plantation

Hawaii is very touristy, to say the least, & the Pearl Harbour Memorial is the epitome of just that. The folks from the US of A lap it up. But I was very unimpressed.

First you watch a half hour film about the Pearl Harbour attack. It didn't tell me anything that I hadn't already seen on the History Channel. Then they take you out to the wreck of the USS Arizona, where there is a memorial to those who died that day. The memorial itself is actually quite ugly, to be honest (below). They tell you that the oil droplets on the surface under the memorial are from the ship's fuel stores, but rumour has it that the yanks leak it intentionally for the tourists.

Lucky it was free, because I would have felt cheated otherwise.

While we were waiting for the memorial, we went next door to the USS Bowfin, a WWII submarine. It was much more interesting than the memorial. They give out a headset that gives you a self guided audio tour of the vessel.

The highlight was the active amphibious assault ship (AAS) coming into port at the time. (see left of picture below). They look a bit like an aircraft carrier but only accommodate helicopters, Osprey and other S.T.O.L. aircraft, not jets.
The battleship USS Missouri was pretty impressive. Battleships have given way to Carrier groups these days.

Dole Pineapple Plantation

This is the most touristy thing on Oahu. The Dole Plantation. It was OK, but was seriously corny! For those who have been to the Big Pineapple in Queensland, the train was like that, except the narration was corny and the plantation was a bit unkempt. We do these things to tick the box and say we've done it. Having said that, the pineapple sorbet in the waffle cones were awesome!

The new room doesn't have the view, but it is heaps quieter and the view at night is better.

Flight to Hawaii

Our trip from Christchurch to Hawaii started pretty well. Kerri, her Nanna and me, all boarded the trusty 737 for the short flight up to Auckland. We even arrived on time (more or less).

After a fairly brisk maneuver from Auckland domestic airport to the international terminal, we just cleared customs in time to get on the flight. We even taxied and powered up to take off. We got about 100m before the pilot shut the engines down and headed back to the terminal. Four hours later the plane was fixed and we were off again.

This is about the only highlight of our horrible travel day. The photo below was taken as we were flying past Fiji.

We finally arrived in Honolulu at about 1.30am instead of the 9.30pm as originally planned. To make things worse, the customs officials in trying to speed things up, shafted us big time! We were about mid pack in the line and ended up being the last through the customs gate. Our suit cases were already off the carousel and being looked at as abandoned baggage. It was 3.30am before we turned the light out at the hotel.
We didn't surface until 9.30am and this is the view from our hotel room. It overlooks the entire Waikiki strip.

Unfortunately we had to let it go. The wall next to our heads backed onto the lift well. It meant that we thought there were road works in progress down on the street. We figured that we weren't going to be in the hotel much and a good night sleep was more important than the view.