Day 12

City By the Bay

After a delicious egg breakfast prepared by Uncle Mud, we headed for downtown San Francisco. First stop was the Rock (Alcatrez). Getting to the Pier where the tour company/boat is located was a journey. San Francisco has the worst/most confusing public transportation system we have ever experienced. We ended up in the middle of the city 20 blocks from the pier. Luckily there was a cable car coming to get us up over the hill toward the bay. This ended up working out as it gave us time to each do a Tanner Family pose on the SF cable cars. Finally we reached Pier 33 and for the bargain price of 21.75 (when the sun goes down this jumps to 30.00), we were shuttled across San Francisco Bay to the Prison at Alcatraz. Brendan at least 20 times did his Sean Connery, "Welcome to the Rock" bit on the boat over, on the island, and on the boat back. The island is impressive but at the same time completely falling apart. The highlight is the cellhouse which held the likes of Whitey Bulger, Al Capone, and The Birdman (a mass murderer, Brendan liked the name). You take kind of a self guided audio tour through the house and it tells you all kinds of stories. The funniest part of the audio tour was when we couldn't get our audio players in sync so Brendan was constantly lagging behind Pete and taking wrong turns, angering patient Pete. When we were leaving the cell house, Pete thought he saw John Mason and Dr. Stanley Goodspeed running along the south side of the island and feared for a split second we were gonna be napalmed. False alarm though, everything was fine.

After Alcatraz and some lunch we made our way to Buena Vista, the birth place of the Irish Coffee in America (1952). Hands down the best Irish Coffee either one of us has ever had. We wanted to have seconds but held back because we had to get back on the public transportation. Even without a second helping of Irish Whiskey it was entirely possible we could end up in Oakland. With some luck and a little help from the locals, we made it to AT&T Ballpark for the Giants vs. Astros, and more importantly Barry Bonds.

The Giants Ballpark is right on the bay, gorgeous views. Tonight wasn't a good night for Bonds, no homeruns and the only thing he broke was the scoreboard behind homeplate with a foul ball. We were lucky we didn't get any beers off the head during his at bats as Brendan was not shy in yelling things like "Juicer" or "Give us a Roid Rage, Barry". Giants won 4-2. Great Ballpark, also the cleanest ballpark we have ever seen.

San Francisco is a great city. They have mastered the trolley/cable car scene but entirely dropped the ball on the high speed underground transit system. Pete: "Pretty sure a blind person was head architect of this shitshow"

Song of the Day: Theme song from "The Rock".
Quote of the Day: "Sweet Alcatraz Tour. I hope half way through 8 Marines don't seize the island and leave us in the cells to be napalmed. That would suck." - Pete

This blog was heavily saturated with "The Rock" references. If you haven't seen the movie we apologize but after the day we had it was a must. "Im only borrowing your humvee".

Tommorow will be a relaxing day in Half Moon Bay. More delicious food from Aunt Candice and Uncle Mud. Life is good.

Pete and B