As all first-time visitors to San Francisco must do, we visited Alcatraz today. The lines were long and the ferry was crowded — I can’t even imagine what it’s like on a weekend — but it was worth a visit. First of all, it was interesting to see a prison that close…it seemed so small compared to other prisons I’ve seen from the outside. Also, it was hard to get over how tiny the cells were.

Second, the island itself was strangely pretty, for what’s essentially a great rock, and the views from the island of the city skyline and bridges were fantastic. It also helped that the weather was gorgeous today, a vast improvement over the gray skies of the past two days.

Back on dry land we hopped in a cab and went to try Church Key. Unfortunately it wasn’t open for lunch; fortunately, we were near Rogue. I had to go back to a) have some more of those pulled pork sliders, and b) make up for my last beer yesterday, which had been shit. I had the hazelnut brown, Nellie had the Dogfish Head punkin.

There was one last thing on our agenda: looking down Lombard Street from the top. We walked up endless hills to get this vantage, which it turns out isn’t that impressive. We’d hoped to jump on a cable car to take us down the hill, but it was packed, so we just walked the last few minutes back to the hotel. Since then it’s been a nice relaxing afternoon of lying around our suite, and reading outside by the fire.

Tonight we’ll stick our noses into Haight-Ashbury for dinner so we can at least have a look at what that neighbourhood is like. And that will more or less wrap up the San Fran portion of our trip.