Today we went to Alcatraz! As you probably know, it is an island, so we had to catch a boat to get there! When we arrived, we received an audio tour, which led you all around the inside of the prison. We went through lots of cells,heard stories of escape attempts and learnt lots of facts. We got to see the isolation cells, which are for the prisoners who can't even see other prisoners, because of lots of reasons. In the dining room, they had the kitchen bared off to keep them away from the knives...gulp. Even so, the knives still went missing sometimes... even more gulp! My favourite fact was that they had an ice cream machine when Alcatraz held prisoners! Crazy, huh? Also that some prisoners got off the island, but were never seen again. Did they escape? Or drown trying? As of today, Alcatraz is part of a national park system, because of all the birds which inhabit the island. We were lucky to see lots of birds, as it was breeding time for the birds. One crazy thing we saw with the snowy egrets a mother and her chicks having a fight because she had just arrived and hadn't had enough time to get the food ready to regurgitate for her babies, and the babies were hungry. Overall, Alcatraz was really fun and I loved finding all this stuff out. Definitely a must do if you go to San Francisco . Gemma! Alcataz... A prison on an island.  But the prisoners were quite lucky sometimes because they got to read lots of books, play baseball, and eat ice cream! I learnt that children actually lived on the island too (but the children weren't prisoners!). We saw lots of amazing birds at Alcatraz too. The snowy egret was my favourite. It lays blue eggs that are really small, but the birds grow so fast.  We saw 3 week old birds that were up to my knees!  There are lots of flowers on Alcatraz too.  Alcatraz reminded me of the Lego set Prison Island.  I really liked visiting there...it was fun ( and tiring). Daniel