The one thing we have both been looking forward to was our trip to Alcatraz. Our tour of Alcatraz was slightly misleading.  We bought tickets for a night tour, thinking it would be dark when we were touring the prison, but it turned out to mean “after the day tours”.

Our ferry departed at 6:45pm and it was a cool, windy day.  Of course, I forgot my light jacket, you know the one I brought to San Francisco just for this outing? Yeah.  It was cold.  and windy.  We were the only ones on the boat without a jacket or sweatshirt.  Whoops!  We took the short ferry ride over to the island.  Did I mention it was windy?  Check out my hair in this photo.

As we got closer to the island, the captain started telling us some historical information about the island, which was pretty cool.

Before we got off the ferry, they made sure to tell us that the last two boats leaving the island boarded at 8:45 and 9:25. All the guided tours of Alcatraz include an audio tour, which I’ve heard great things about from everyone who has taken it.  We had a terrific experience with an audio tour in York, England when we toured the Minster church, so this one had some big shoes to fill.    We got up the hill pretty quickly (ok, we cheated and hopped on the tram…hey, it was there and available).

We arrived at the beginning of the tour, got suited up with our headphones and we were on our way.  At first, there were a lot of people congregated in one space, but you could pause the audio track whenever you wanted to so in a few minutes the crowds thinned out as people started traveling at their own paces.  We were on the look out for funny photo opportunities and of course we were not disappointed.

We passed through one of the cell blocks and were looking into the cells.  They are 5×9x7, about the size of our kitchen.  Seriously!

Let’s talk about the condition of the toilets and sinks…I know the place hasn’t been used in over 40 years so that must explain the plumbing issues.  Could this be a job for Scubbing Bubbles?

As we were walking through there was one open cell that everyone was just walking by. Of course Jose decides to step inside it, so I start snapping pictures like crazy.  People walking by started laughing and waiting for their turn and soon there was a huge line waiting to get inside the cell.  That’s my husband…the trendsetter…always climbing into the jail cell.

Kitchen/dining hall area.

Visitation Room

View from a little window in the Recreation Yard door

One of the stops on the tour talked about an escape attempt that involved taking guards hostage.  These markings on the floor were made by grenades dropped to stop the escape attempt.

There was another escape, this one involving three prisoners.  They did manage to escape from Alcatraz, but were never found.  It’s unknown whether they survived the swim or not.  They used spoons to carve a larger hole in their vent and then climbed out using the existing pipe system.  Similiar to, but not exactly like The Shawshank Redemption (one of my top 10 favorite movies AND short stories.)

Halfway through our tour, someone needed to take a bathroom break and it wasn’t me.   You all know how I feel about public toilets…I’d never use the bathroom at Alcatraz, let alone do this.  Eewwwww.

We toured all the cell blocks and even went into one of the solitary confinement AKA isolation cells.  These were a little larger, but had doors and then cell doors, too.  We got a few creepy pictures and an equally creep video. Jose was doing his best Blair Witch Project impression here.  Check out the guy that walked into the cell, freaked out a bit and quickly left.

We walked through the entire prison, and even went upstairs to tour the medical facility.  That was cool and very creepy. Some of the rooms only had one light in the corner, or just a piece of medical equipment like an operating table or xray machine.

Here’s Jose standing in the medical cell of the Birdman of Alcatraz.  For some reason, I couldn’t spend a lot of time in this cell.

Here are some random shots that didn’t really fit anywhere else in this post.

As we left the prison, the sun was setting and the grounds started getting dark. We walked down the big hill and as we rounded a corner, Jose yelled “Oooh yeah!!” and started pointing. Up ahead, in a small building was the prison morgue.  FUN!  NOT!  I took a picture of him outside the morgue and then passed the camera to Jose.  He took a few pictures inside the window while I stood far far away.

The buildings on Alcatraz have not fared well due to the weather conditions, the salt erosion and the damage done by the Native Americans that took over in the 60s.  The state of the buildings does help set the mood of the tour, and it’s strange to think about the 1500 men who were incarcerated here.  In addition to the men, women and children who lived on the island.

I know there are a TON of photos here, you’re probably surpised to learn that I left a lot more out.  I don’t want to spoil the experience for you, when you tour Alcatraz.  I hope I didn’t. It’s worth doing.  When it was all said and done, this audio tour was amazing.  I’d highly recommend it for anyone who hasn’t been to Alcatraz.  You’ll be fascinated.  they did a very phenomenal job of producing the audio portion and planning out the tour.

On our second day in San Francisco, we slept in.  I know, I know…things to do and see, but hey, we like our sleep and taking it easy on vacation.  We decided to take the bus (using our awesome Muni passes, again) to the Italian village area for a San Francisco specialty called cioppino.  Until recently, I was unaware of this tasty dish that’s a kind of seafood stew. 

We used yelp.com to find almost all of the restaurants we visited on this trip. and this place was rated the best for cioppino.  It’s a small, tiny restaurant with a few tables outside.  Since the weather was lovely, we chose to eat outside.  We ordered a bowl of clam chowder and one serving of cioppino. I heard via a yelp review that it’s a HUGE portion, so we figured we’d share it.  I like seafood, but clams, mussels and oysters are on the low end of the spectrum for me. Usually I find that the clams are overcooked and tough, especially in chowder, so I wasn’t expecting it to be spectacular.  Sometimes chowder is too thick and gluey, too.  This one, however, was perfect.  The clams were tender and flavorful and just the right size.  (I don’t care for unchopped clams…they remind me of chewing gum…definitely not appetizing!)
 
Like a lot of people, I mistakenly assumed cioppino was an Italian dish because of the name, but it actually  was created in the North Beach area.  It’s called cioppino (chi-pino) because a fishermen would make lunch on the docks and call down to the other boats to see if they wanted to “chip in” some of their daily catch.  They they would all share the stew.  Ok, that’s my very simple explanation and I think it’s fairly accurate.

After the chowder came the cioppino.  It was chock full of crab, bay shrimp and scallops, large shrimp, snapper, clams, calamari and mussels (which I did not eat) all in a tomato/garlic/seafood stock.  Ohh my gosh it was SOOO good.  I think this was the best new food thing I’ve tasted in a long, long time.  I wanted to drink the broth or at least lick the bowl when I was done.  I’m pretty stingy with salt when I cook beacause I like to let people do their own seasoning and I prefer less salty food.  The cioppino was salty, but it wasn’t overly salty (I did drink 6 glasses of water, tho, which made for an interesting walk through Chinatown!) 
     

The chef came out a few times to talk to us, and we saw lots of local people stop by to talk to the owner who was sitting at a table next to us.  Overall, we’d recommend this place to anyone.  It’s relatively close to Union Square, we took a bus ride that was pretty quick.  The restaurant is Sotto Mare and you can find the menu here. 

After a scrumptious lunch we walked off  some of the food and headed towards Chinatown the fortune cookie factory that was on our “to do” list.  Chinatown was really busy and crowded, but full of life and energy.  There were a ton of little grocery shops selling vegetable and other items like hats, flipflops and cases of ginko biloba.  We had a few dimsum places ready to try, but were so full from lunch that we didn’t stop.  We’re hoping to do that this week before we leave.  

We keep walking a few blocks to find the Fortune Cookie Factory where they make 20,000 fortune cookies a day. By hand.  Impressive, right?  Our directions took us down a main street and then said to turn down an alley and look for the factory.  So we did.  We walked up and down the alley two times.  We could smell the cookies, but couldn’t see them.  Finally on the third trip up the alley, we found the factory.  Or in reality, the small store front, er excuse me, the small alley front with three Chinese ladies sitting on folding chairs in front of hot irons folding fortune cookies.  One lady, the one closest to the door was smiling and chatting, the other two were not. 
 
I loved the manager guy, he was so nice.  He gave out warm cookies (unfolded) to everyone who came in and if you bought something you got another handful to take on the road.  After a handshake. He wouldn’t hand over your merchandise or the free cookies until you shook his hand.

Here are some random Chinatown pictures…archictecture, Peking Duck and some interesting mechandise.  We went into a store selling shark fin for soup, but we weren’t able to photograph them.  Sorry!
     
It’s late and I am going to leave you with a video clip of the amazing fortune cookie factory.  Have no fear, I did purchase cookies to bring home.  Some have mystery fortunes.  Should be interesting! I promise I’ll get to our Alcatraz tour and Sonoma/Napa Valley day trip ASAP, too.  I have a celebrity chef sighting to discuss!

We got up at the crack of dawn this morning. Literally…3 AM.  It was not pleasant.  Normally on Saturday evenings I’m just going to bed at 3AM, not waking up.  Especially when I went to bed at midnight.  I woke Jose up at 3:45 and we were out the door around 4:15.  Now, most of you know that Jose and I had some trouble acclimating to each others’ morning routine in the early years of our marriage. You see,  I’m a morning person.  He is….not.  Definitely, not.  I like doing shocking things in the morning, like smiling, and waving at people and *gasp* using words, actual human words, instead of grunts.  For years, we got off to bad starts in the morning until I came to one simple conclusion. Morning Silence.  Seriously, we learned that the less we spoke to each other (i.e.  the less I spoke to him –see human words vs. grunts above)  the better.  Once we passed this learning curve, things were golden. 

We got in the car this morning and I told him he could sleep on the way to the airport, because he doesn’t normally sleep on the plane. In the end, he decided to stay awake and talk to me on the way to the airport.  We were discussing the clothes we chose to bring, because lately whenever we travel, we always have the opposite weather than what’s predicted (refencing our Italy trip last spring when it was 32 degrees and we had no winter clothes)  We’ve also mastered the art of packing lightly and I mentioned that I may have to do laundry one evening. So the next thing I hear is Jose asking “Why do they call it underwear?”  So I launched into this long conversation about the history of undergarments. Five minutes later, I realize he’s not talking and is just looking at me with a strange expression (not really that unusual).  Then he says “WHAAAT?  What are you talking about??” 
I said, “Well, you asked me about why they call it underwear and I was telling you.” 
He says, “No…I asked you why they call it WonderBread!!”
“Oh” – I must have been really tired this morning if I’m mishearing Wonderbread for underwear, even though we were talking about laundry and the topic of bread was never mentioned. 

On to more relevant things.  We boarded the plane in record time and were taxing before our departure time.  I’ve flown a lot in my life, from the time I was 4 years old.  Maybe I just don’t pay attention much, but I swear I’ve never seen this before.  Watch this short clip and look carefully at the ceiling.  Leaky air, gas, whatever you call it, is not a good way to start a flight!  No one else seemed to be concerned, so I just took a quick video and prepared for take off.

We arrived at SFO this morning around 10am.  Our flight was perfect, once we got in the air.  When we took off, the plane wobbled a bit and felt like it was going to roll.  Seriously.  When we got here, I called my mom and she said it was really windy in Chicago this morning.  Anyway, once we got in the air, the flight was darn near perfect.  I continued my tradtion of falling asleep as soon as the plane was in the air and I slept for the first 3 hours.  I woke up every hour or so to look around and then went back to sleep.  I read part of my book for the last hour (finally getting around to reading the first Sookie Stackhouse novel – Dead Until Dark, which is the basis for True Blood) and then we were arriving at SFO.

We purchased Muni-passes, which gives us unlimited rides on the cable cars and busses for a set amount of days.  We bought the $24 pass which is a bargain considering one ride on a cable car is $5!!!   We took the BART from the airport after spending a few minutes trying to figure out how to purchase a BART ticket.  Thanks to the friendly New Yorker who helped us out!  It was less than $11 for us to take the train vs. a taxi fare that would be at least $30 and the train is so easy, however, the BART has the worst public transit slogan I’ve ever heard:  ”BART, and you’re there!” Really, San Francisco, is that the best you can do?

One thing that shocked me:  The BART train we were on had carpet!! and fabric seats.  Yuck!!  I was completely grossed out by the fact that the seats weren’t cleanable, wipeable sanitzable plastic!!  I’m not being a germophobe here, but that’s just unsanitary!  People throw up on public transit, or have unfortuante bathroom accidents and being able to clean up these mishaps is crucial.  Not that I know anything about throwing up on public transit.  Really, I don’t.

After a short half hour we arrived at our BART stop (specifics involving the details of our trip, hotel, restaurants, etc will come when we get home.) and we emerged from underground into a huge mass of people.  There was noise and music and lots of yelling. Yep.  We managed to end up right in the middle of the Gay Pride parade today.  It was crazy and a little more difficult to navigate through the crowds, but we made it.  We walked uphill a few blocks to our hotel.  It wasn’t so bad, but the big hills came after our hotel.  When we arrived at our hotel our room wasn’t ready, so we dropped off our bags and decided to go down to Fisherman’s Wharf for some food. 

We got on a cable car, after missing the first 3 because they were so full.  People literally hang off them.  I didn’t think that actually was allowed, but it is.  Finally we manage to get a seat inside one of the cable cars and it was packed with people. They are literally sitting in your lap.  I was surprised at how old the cable car system is.  Our car felt like it was falling apart with every stop, start and turn.  There was lots of metal grinding, squealing and the sounds of wood being ripped apart.  That’s not very reassuring at all.  I wasn’t fond of the ride inside the cable car, and made sure on our return trip that I was outside where the oxygen was located  .

We walked around Fisherman’s Wharf and had some yummy fried calamari as a snack since neither of us had eaten more than peanut M and Ms.  The calamari was delicious.  It had a nice mix of tentacles and non-tentacle part (what’s that called?…the body?). 

I have a number of friends who don’t eat seafood (crazy, I know).  One of my friends actually says “I don’t eat things that swim”, so when I saw this sign, I had to take a picture of it for her. 

Then we stopped at a restaurant and had some amazing Dungeness crab in garlic butter.  Sorry, no photos…we were too hungry and ate it before we even thought about taking a picture!  After this, we were so full that we decided to go back to the hotel to unpack and chill out a bit (ie take a nap!!).  We walked to Ghiradelli Square and stopped at a small ice cream shop for a massive sundae.  This concoction was a peanut butter hot fudge situation that was beyond yummy, however, it was too much! and we didn’t eat very much of it. 

We waited about 25 minutes for a cable car and managed to get a seat on the bench oustide.  There was a very knowledable man taking some friends on a tour standing on the rail right in front of us, so we got a little geography lesson on the trip home.  The guy was crazy tho, besides being waaay too happy, he kept dangling off the cable car, leaning back and holding on with one hand only.  I managed to get a shot of him and Jose. 
  
This is a really big hill that we walked down.  While it’s much better to walk down the hill than up, down is still dangerous.  The hill was so steep that I felt like I’d fall over and roll down ala Humpty Dumpty or a WeebleWobble if I leaned forward too much!

To end our evening, we passed a store selling items made from Jose’s favorite animal (besides his birds, Nina, Billy, the squirrel that lives in our backyard and our pal, Paparazzi Racoon) the ALPACA!!
  
Stay tuned for more tomorrow!  I am leaving you with a demonstration of how the cable cars turn around at the end of the route.

 

We’re heading out west to San Francisco this weekend for vacation.  I’m counting on the weather being nicer than it is here in Chicago.  You know, where it’s been hotter than Hell the past few days.  I hear SF has my kind of weather, mid 60s during the day and cool at night.  Love that.  As usual, we don’t have too much planned for our trip, other than a night tour of Alcatraz, which I’m really looking forward to.  I just hope it’s not scary.  I can handle spooky, but not scary. We may also take a walking tour of Chinatown, but that’s not set in stone yet.

I can’t wait to eat delicious seafood, and of course try some cioppino.  I borrowed a guide book from my Aunt Kathy a few years ago, so we are armed with at least one resource, and Jose will be getting a blackberry from work, so he can be reached in case of emergency, which will come in handy for navigating.

So many people have suggested we rent a car and drive to Carmel or go to Napa, but I don’t know what we’re doing yet.  I’d like to drive down the coast so we might do that one day. Check often for updates about what we’re doing and eating! (of course)!

ciao,
Chris

After a very long hiatus (January, some time I think) I made it back to the gym today.  I tried to make it last week, but had some appointments on my calendar that I forgot about.  I really need to get some sort of planner instead of the scraps of paper that litter my purse. (Blackberry Curve -available in red, I hear you calling me…but you must wait until August 1 so I can get the most of my upgrade option, tho I think if someone in my house who isn’t me has his way, I’ll be getting a PalmPre)

Back to my gym renaissance…after teaching summer school today, I had a killer headache and hadn’t eaten lunch, so I knew I wouldn’t be in any shape to work out.  Instead, I called Jose and asked if he wanted to go to the gym tonight.  After moments of shocked silence and a lot of me saying “hello…are you there??” he said, “SURE!!!”  ok, not with that much enthusiasm, but you get the picture.

I did my usual…stationary bike for 30 minutes. I did a moderate pace, variable setting and I didn’t have to stop once!  woohoo!  It was hot in there and my left earbud kept falling out (damn you small ears!!!) but I manged to stay focused, courtesy of last week’s Star magazine.  Why is it OK to read trash when working out?  Do the benefits of a workout negate the brain-turning-to-mush powers of tabloid publications?

Surprisingly, I felt great after the workout and I’m actually looking forward to my next workout on Wednesday.  Which again will be an evening workout because I have to do some work at school in my library on Weds/Thursday after summer school, but that’s ok.  I won’t be going back in this summer and want to get a few jobs done for the fall.  So Wednesday I will bike again and Thursday I will be swimming.  The pool looked so inviting today after my workout, but I didn’t have time to swim and bike today.

I should change the channel on the TV.  I am watching Unwrapped on the Food Network and seeing pink Hostess snoballs whizzing past. Instead of reaching for the bag of gummy bears my sister gave me, I am going to make a strawberry smoothie with fresh strawberries, yogurt and 2% milk.  I need to start cutting back to lowfat millk, and I can drink 1%, but I get milk from a local dairy and they don’t make 1%.  I really like their milk.  I used to voluntarily drink skim milk, but now the thought of it is not appealing in any way.  I do like ice in my milk, but I drink it quickly so it doesn’t get all watery.

alright, i can tell from my above paragraph that it’s time to stop blogging for the night.  I’m not doing a good job of focusing so I will go make my smoothie and then go tackle my gigantic reading list.  Ahhhh. I love summer vacation!!

San Francisco updates in my next post!