Alcatraz Prison

A welcome to Alcatraz Island. Remnants of the prison, and the Native American occupancy from 1969-1970.

Welcome to prison.


Here is your cell.

Guard Tower

From inside the dining hall

Don't help the prisoners escape!

A city tour of San Francisco

A ride on the San Francisco Cable Car

On our last day we finally got a chance to ride on the famous San Francisco Cable Car. The price seemed steep, $5.00 per ride, but actually it was lots of fun, especially standing on the edge and holding onto the pole.

Speaking of holding on to the pole, here is my friend, blatantly breaking the posted rules of pole holding. Tisk, tisk.. ^^

As you can see here, the trolleys are so old that they have no reverse switch. They need to be pushed manually onto a turntable, and the driver has to actually spin the turntable by hand, as this man is doing here. The drivers were an eclectic bunch, our first driver was a very entertaining Western guy. Then coming back we had a Middle Eastern looking man with a turban, and the conductor was a Chinese man who spent his time after collecting the tickets standing in the back and chatting in Chinese with some of the other riders. That's just San Francisco, I guess you could call that reverse culture shock, that I'm so surprised to see so many different cultures here...

The rest of the photos are things I shot while the car was moving. They came out pretty good, none the less, I think.

A view of Coit Tower in the distance on Telegraph Hill. We never got up there, we were too sick and tired the whole time to think about climbing such a big hill.


A view of Alcatraz in the water below.

Some lovely food sights in San Francisco...

Some food delights I enjoyed/ witnessed while in San Francisco...



Ice cream at Ghiradelli Square
Vietnamese beef Pho
California roll... in California!
Chicken Parmagana.... can't find this in Seoul...
A sight never seen in Seoul... An Italian supermarket with an endless case of cheese...

Cheesecake from Cheesecake factory (1000 calories a slice.. almost)

Potstickers, not quite like I had in Taiwan, but delicious anyway...

Pork Buns :-)
Famous San Francisco sourdough bread... in some interesting forms.

First real culture shock..

We went to the North Beach section of San Francisco to get an Italian dinner. I ordered my chicken parmigiana and we thought a glass of wine would be nice to go with it. I ordered a nice Riesling and the waiter turned to me and asked, "could I see some ID please?". ID? What ID? They took my Korean ARC at the airport in immigration when I left Incheon, I left my passport in my hotel room, and my Vermont license was sitting in my jewelry box in Boston, expired, over a year ago. "How about a photocopy of my passport?" I asked, since I carry that around with me when I'm out of the country at all times, just in case. "Sorry, ma'am, I can't serve you tonight."

What a far cry from Korea where I'm fairly certain you could get served in your high school uniform at the right place. Oh well, I just saved myself $8.00 on a glass of wine I didn't really need.


Since we're on the topic of culture shock, though I'm feeling there is a severe lack of convenience stores in this country. Where's my Family Mart on every corner???

San Francisco: The Golden Gate Bridge

We joined a city tour that allows us access to their buses for the remainder of our trip. We got a tour around, and then we got on a bus that took us over the Golden Gate Bridge. Now, the bus driver tried to explain to us why it was called the "Golden Gate" bridge, since it's not very golden, but I didn't really understand the explanation (and it was in English! Go figure...). It seemed to have something to do with how it is painted every year, and is always under the process of being painted. By the time they finish painting the bridge, it's time to start again.



Though, actually... while it is a really nice bridge, I still don't get why it's so famous.... after all, it's still just a bridge...

But, it was really fun to drive over on the roof of the tour bus!

San Francisco: Fisherman's Warf

Well, there's not much in the way of fishing to see here. It's mostly a big tourist trap, but you can also get some good sea food here if you like that sort of thing. And you can see the sea lions chilling out at pier 39.
Some sea food stalls with all sorts of food for take out.
Our lunch of shrimps at Boudin's. It was great, but they weren't shelled so we had to take off the shells ourselves. It got a little messy.
The sea lions at Pier 39.

Some bread at Boudin's.