Seattle is incredibly good at building empires such as ‘Starbucks’ coffee shops, Bill gates ‘Microsoft’ etc, but in all honesty is little good for anything else. It Is a sparce city full of flannel wearing music and artist wannabes with a backdrop of the business mind as stated above. But that doesn’t make this and interesting place to visit as its all behind the scenes stuff which as we said is no good to us or any other visitors. The only things we visited that you can visit were the sculpture park that sits on the edge of the city next to the esplanade and the pin tower which is a high rise restaurant with viewing platform, but we only viewed this from the outside as we have done the eat in the sky and view the city thing before. The sculpture park is only there because the land was waste ground between the city and the esplanade railway on several different levels and nothing else could be built there due to the geographic lay out of the land and it small size. So they did well to use the space for something but the sculptures are a bit poor so th point is debatable.

Much more interesting than Seattle a couple of days south is San Francisco, famous for the Golden gate bridge and Alcatraz aka The Rock. Alcatraz is situated under two miles off he mainland of San Francisco bay. It has had many uses in its time but is most famous for its last which was a prison of which was allegedly inescapable!

We took a tour out to Alcatraz which takes twelve minutes by boat, when you step on to the Island there is a noticeable temperature change of around 10 degrees or more. Surprised? Yeah so were we, this place is like the North pole, the chilling sea breeze tears through and around the place as if it were a wind tunnel in a blizzard.

The self guided audio tour of the Cell block house is brilliant, narrated by Correctional officers and convicts and even some of their family members it grips your imagination bringing the place alive with the sounds. The audio rings a distinct slam of the cell door while you are stood inside the isolation block in one of the cells in complete darkness. Grenade blast marks on the floor show the intensity of the ‘Battle of Alcatraz’ after the prisoners managed to take the cell block and the guards guns. The conflict lasted days with the Correctional officers and Marines battling the inmates through the window bars and from holes made in the roof. There was obviously only one outcome which was dead prisoners and officers, with the prison coming back under control of the guards and military.

The picture that shows the ventilation grill out of the cell wall is a contradiction to the myth that Alcatraz was inescapable and no one got away. Three prisoners did get away and were never found either dead or alive. They dug the grills out of the wall in there cells with spoon handles, crawled up the ventilation shafts to the roof and down onto the ground before getting away in a make shift raft of branches and rain coats. The prisoners say that the three escapes had learnt Spanish from the prisons library and in house rehabilitation courses and gone to South America. The officials say that as they were never found that they drowned in the icy cold sea and therefore didn’t actually escape! You can make up your own mind if this counts as escape or not!?! There were two other escape attempts where two prisoners swam to shore but they were known to be missing and were captured as soon as they got to shore. The picture of the three faces are the three that got out and on the raft.

Facts about Alcatraz…. It was never full to capacity, the average number of inmates was 260, the lowest number held was 222 and the highest 320. It required 90 Correctional officers to cover three 8-hour shifts and cover annual/sick leave. Some of the officers and their families lived on Alcatraz, there were three apartment buildings, four wood frame farm houses and a duplex on the parade ground. Alcatraz had no death row or death penalty facilities. The prison closed due to deteriorating buildings and high operating costs, such as the lack of a sewage system. The last inmate left the island on March 21t 1963, the prison officially closed its doors a few months later.

Before leaving the island we met an ex inmate of the prison, he had spent four years in Alcatraz for Bank robbery. He portrayed a very ignorant and aggressive nature while he was in the souvenir shop doing signings of the book he had wrote. When we saw him on he last boat back from the island he was completely different, laughing and joking with the crew who he obviously knew well. So we can never really be sure what kind of a person this guy now is but either way his opinion is the same as the other ex inmates that narrated the tout and that is that this place
was hard and no good for anyone! Guess they shouldn’t have committed crime then.

Prior to our Alcatraz trip we had had a day out in the city looking round the Union square which is another of those city squares normally full of city dwellers eating dinner or seeking peace from the busy bustle of the city, otherwise it remains unused until some concert or football game gets screened on a big projector. We had also gone to the cities china town, which oddly enough everywhere we have been seems to have one! China town here had a grand gateway entrance with all the trimmings to match, the street was strung with lanterns and even the street light poles had been replaced with authentic ones covered in dragons and lanterns and a pagoda style top piece to finish.

David had been obsessed with the street cars that run from the bottom of the hills in the city and ride to the top then back down again since he saw the first one pass by China town. As there was no way he was going to leave San Francisco until he had been on one we went in search of a good hill for him to have a ride on one. After finding the correct hill with enough up and level bits with cross roads and all that jazz, we parked the car at the top of the hill and David walked down to the very bottom. Carina had stayed near the car as she wasn’t fancying this so would take some pictures as the street car came up.

The street car rides must be one of the only things left in the world of public transport that have a complete and utter disregard for health and safety, which is a damn good job as it wouldn’t be half as much fun if they didn’t. The reason for this is that you wait for the street car to stop at either a stop (boring) or in the middle of the cross roads between the lights going red and green (much more fun) then you jump on, there is the option t sit down either inside or on the open outward facing seats if they are free. But the best option is just to get on the step at the sides and hang on to the rails, leaning out to see the oncoming hill climb while making sure you miss the oncoming traffic or the rear approaching traffic depending which side you are on!

As the street car came up the hill Carina had a clear view of David hanging off the side grinning like a Cheshire cat obviously having loads of fun like an overgrown kid. Instead of getting off at the stop near the car and Carina, he just went sailing on past and over the hill out of sight, eventually getting off one stop before the last and walking back down the hill to the car.

If you get chance ever to do this you have to have a go, its great fun and is mainly full of tourists doing the same thing and snapping away with their cameras and trying to film the ride while trying to hang on.

The street car ride was a perfect end to San Francisco and although simple, defiantly a memorable moment in the high end.