The Angus Report - San Francisco

Sorry, I’ve been a bit slow on the blog but we’ve been extremely busy.
On our first day in San Francisco, Mum and I went on a guided walking tour of the city with our tour guide, Henry. We walked down the crookedest street in North America, Lombard Street. We also walked up and down some of the steepest streets in the country. We broke off from the tour early due to time issues and walked back to our hostel to meet Dad and Giaan. We had walked for 4 hours and at this point we had a bit of a dilemma – Giaan’s ankle was sore but Mum and all of us wanted to walk the Golden Gate Bridge. In the end, Mum and I decided to walk it. From our hostel, it was a 5 mile walk to the bridge (how many kms is that?). On the way there, we saw a professional dog walker who was walking7 dogs at the same time. He almost was tripped up many times.

Once we got to the bridge, I was quite surprised. The bridge was swaying slightly in the strong wind (Dad’s bus tour guide said the bridge is actually designed to sway up to 28 feet – how many metres??) There were bikes whizzing past. It took us 45 minutes to walk to the other side. The views were fabulous. From where we were standing, Mum got a great shot of me with my hand up as if I holding up the bridge (check out the photo). On the way back to the southside of the bridge, a low cloud was hanging over the bridge so when we walked,we went straight through the cloud!
The next day, we went to Alcatraz (check out the link), a small island in San Francisco Bay. This was formerly used as a prison for the worst criminals in America. Alcatraz was quite scary in a lot of ways with the way the prisoners lived and the violent lives they led. Outside the prison, it was freezing as the wind whipped up over the Bay. What surprised me the most was the showers. There was a line of 20 shower heads and the prisoners stripped off to wash with no privacy whatsoever.

Overall, I enjoyed LA more than San Francisco but I was glad we had 3 nights there. The souveneirs I bought there were a Golden Gate pin and a San Francisco pin with an Alcatraz shirt.

Hope you’re all well.