Before we left for San Francisco, Jonathan reserved tickets for us to visit Alcatraz. I guess that tickets can be hard to come by and when he’d checked earlier, none were available. But the day before we left he was able to get us two for the 8:45am departure on Sunday morning.
We were up early anyway since our bodies hadn’t fully adjusted to the time change, grabbed some granola bars, and caught a bus out to Pier 33. Promptly at 8:45 we were on our way over to The Rock on a ferry with a couple hundred other people.
On the ferry
Alcatraz
Once we were there, they gathered us all up just off the boat to give us a quick orientation talk. We found out that there was a Garden Tour starting at 9:30am, so we watched a bit of the video about the island then met up for the tour.
Orientation talk
This is Marnie, the guide for the Garden Tour. She was great. I think the tour was only supposed to be about 45 minutes long and it ended up being over an hour. It provided a completely different look at Alcatraz than what I had imagined. Volunteers are reconstructing the gardens based on pictures from the 1950s and 1960s. Much had just grown wild since then.
One of the reconstructed flower gardens. They have to bring all of the water over from the main land and it won’t rain again there until October they said.
The water tour was refurbished, but they recreated the graffiti from the Native American occupation of the island. I didn’t know that part of the history of Alcatraz at all.
One of the best parts of the tour was getting to go through some of the closed areas. The views were just stunning.
One of the reasons for all of the flowers was so that when the residents of San Francisco looked out across the bay and saw Alcatraz, they didn’t just see a prison, they at least saw something that was aesthetically pleasing. Some of the gardens were kept by the wives of the prison guards and some were kept by the prisoners themselves.
A view of the Golden Gate bridge
The Cell House
One of the watchtowers
The recreation yard
At the top of the stairs leading into the cell house and looking out on the recreation yard
When the Garden Tour was over, we headed inside for the cell house audio tour. The audio tour was great. It kept us moving throughout the cell house and was narrated by both former guards and inmates. It was informative but also a tad bit chilling.
Three floors of cells
Inside one of the solitary confinement cells.
The library
What one of the cells might have looked like when an inmate occupied it. Apparently some of the inmates took up oil painting and crocheting to pass the time. Bridge was also a popular time-passer.
The front of the cell house
The view of San Francisco from just outside the administration building door.
In the dining room, which was one of the most dangerous places in the prison. The kitchen is just behind the bars.
After we finished the tour, we turned in our headsets and started back down the hill. Along the side of the cell house, we saw a family of geese.
We (barely) caught the 12:25pm ferry back to San Francisco.
Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill as we were docking at Pier 33.
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