and of course we had to pay a visit to the iconic golden gate bridge. we opted not to walk or cycle over it as it was pretty windy! so instead we went over it on the bus but it did give us a lovely view of the bridge and we learnt that the colour it is painted in is 'international orange', not red as you might think.
we also visited alcatraz, which is, as someone put it to us, "the only prison in america you'd pay to go into"! we decided to do a day time trip as i thought the night trip excursions might be a bit scary. we got a boat the one and a half miles out to alcatraz island. it was really interesting and i definitely learnt a lot about alcatraz. we heard about the real story behind the 1979 clint eastwood film 'escape from alcatraz' and stories about some of its famous and infamous former inmates, including al capone.
after we'd been to alcatraz we were at pier 33. we'd heard about the sealions at pier 39 so we thought we'd have a stroll down to see them. i was expecting to see only a few sealions laying around there so i was very shocked to be met with what must have been hundreds of sealions, all stacked on top of each other making plenty of noise and showing off.
clams are another san francisco tradition and where better to sample them than at boudin - the oldest continuously running company in san francisco, going since 1849. i had clam chowder served in a giant, edible sourdough bread bowl!
up early the next day, jamie and i met up with doug, who was to be our walking tour guide for the day, to explore some of the city by foot. first we were guided through the north beach area, also informally known as little italy (the italian flag is even painted on all of its lamp posts). doug took us around north beach pointing out some of its more notable areas, such as the church outside which joe dimaggio and marilyn monroe posed on the steps for photos (but couldn't get married inside, apparently, as joe had been married before) and the cafe where francis ford coppola and mario puzo are supposed to have written the screenplay for the godfather. the latter would be the caffe trieste, below.
doug even told us that both the booth that coppola sat in to write and the espresso machine from the cafe were bought by francis ford coppola and now live in his beautiful production office which is actually just down the road.
the north beach area is well known for its beat history, but more of that later as we planned a whole separate day dedicated to the areas history with the beat writers. with doug we were also guided around chinatown, which we learnt is the second biggest chinatown in the usa (new york having the largest). it certainly was large and we saw some notable places there - including the alleyway and musician featured at the beginning of 'the pursuit of happyness' film, and another alleyway with a small factory that we could sneak into to see some fortune cookies being made from scratch.
the beuna vista cafe is known in san francisco for being the first place the irish coffee was ever served in america. so we decided to head on over there and give these renowned coffees a go. jam doesn't care much for alcohol or coffee, so settled for a hot chocolate.
to end the day, we went on a night bus tour to see some of san francisco's beautiful lights in the dark. some of the views from the top of the city's many hills were amazing. unfortunately, it was raining pretty heavily which spoiled most of the photo opportunities on the night tour, but the golden gate bridge amongst the mist and cloudy sky was a really atmospheric sight.
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