Day 7

We went to a sour dough bakery beside the hotel for breakfast and had pancakes and french toast for breakfast - fresh from the bakery. We had booked onto a tour for the day to take us from our hotel to Muir woods and then onto Alcatraz. We were picked up in our mini bus and driven up to the Golden gate bridge for some photos and then across the bridge towards Muir woods. We had an hour and a half to follow a trail through the woods looking at some of the tallest trees. The woods were beautiful and the trail gave us a chance to walk off some of the food we had been indulging on!

After finishing the trail we were driven to a lovely village called Sausalito which is just across the bay from San Francisco. I would love to live there as it is so beautiful. We had an ice-cream here and wandered through the little village looking in the galleries and tourist shops, then round the marina. Sausalito had lovely views of the Bay bridge, the Golden gate bridge, San Francisco and Alcatraz. After getting back on the bus we headed back across the Golden gate bridge and drove to pier 33 where we got on a boat to Alcatraz. The boat sped across the bay and once at Alcatraz it is amazing to see how big it actually is. You don't have an appreciation of how far the island is from the shore until you are actually on the island too so you can see why is was used as a prison! We were given our headsets and sent on our way round the prison listening to the commentary by a former inmate! It was really easy to follow and there was a lot of stories told that you wouldn't appreciate until standing in the prison imagining it.

After out tour finished we got the boat back over and had a look around USS Pampanito, an old submarine that is berthed in the bay. We also spent a bit of time in an old arcade that had arcade machines from the 1900's to more modern ones. It was great to reminisce about the machines that we seen in our childhood. I even got a squashed penny!

We eventually got the tram back to the Fishermans wharf where we had dinner and relaxed on some deckchairs in front of an open fire pit.