Thursday morning we had reservations to take the first ferry out to Alcatraz so got up early and had the breakfast buffet at the hotel. Before catching the ferry (which was on a pier near Fisherman's Wharf) we went to see the sea lions on Pier 39. There are hundreds of them, lying on top of each other on floating docks, stretching, barking, sleeping, and generally being entertaining.
So we took the ferry over to Alcatraz, took the self guided audio tour through the prison, listened to a National Park ranger's talk on what it was really like to be a prisoner at Alcatraz (which included anecdotes from her own conversations with some former inmates), and wandered around the grounds before taking the ferry back to SF.
I had wanted to try an In and Out Burger (which was a few blocks away deeper into Fisherman's Wharf h*ll) , having heard about them in an interview with the guy who wrote Fast Food Nation. He said that while they are fast food, they are a family owned company that uses only fresh ingredients in their food and cooks to order (and was where he took his family if they wanted to get fast food). They have a limited menu (3 burgers to choose from, fries, shakes and soft drinks) and they are only in CA, NV and AZ unfortunately. A. ordered the #1 (double cheeseburger), I ordered the #2 (cheeseburger) and we split some fries. We ate outside, trying to avoid the dive bombing seagulls that some little kids were feeding right at our feet (I finally had to ask them to move farther away, their parents were oblivious to the whole scene). We don't normally eat fast food (the closest thing we usually get to that is Panera Bread), although we did stop at a McD's in desperation last spring break when traveling back from Williamsburg, VA and stuck in hours of very slow moving traffic (Z. commented that it had been 4 years since we had been to a McD's, she was probably right). This wasn't even close to my memory of a fast food burger, it was much more like the kind of burger you'd get at a sit down restaurant.
We walked back through the ultra-touristy Fisherman's Wharf area to the Boudin Bakery and had a sample of sourdough bread (just so we could say we ate sourdough bread while in SF) and got two Scharffen Berger® Chocolate Mocha Freddo's at Peet's coffee. We walked a few more blocks to the 39 bus and took it all the way up to the Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. We walked around the base and saw the wonderful WPA murals in the lobby but didn't pay to walk up the inside of the tower. The 360° views from the area outside the tower were good enough for us. We then walked down, down, down Filbert Street, which is the "street" that is really steps going through gardens with houses on either side for a few blocks. When we got down to the bottom we walked over to the Embarcadero and got onto the historic streetcar line that takes you to down to the Ferry Building. This is the line that used the old street and trolley cars Muni bought from around the world (including Philadelphia), we were on a car from Chicago.
The Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market is in the Ferry Building Marketplace on Thursday evenings and we got there around 4pm, just as it was beginning. We walked around looking at all the foods shops and stalls from both the Farmer's Market and the Marketplace (oooooh it was a real delight for the eyes and the nose!) There were also some interesting restaurants. We had wanted to eat dinner that evening at the Slanted Door, a popular Vietnamese restaurant in the Ferry Building, but were unable to get a reservation. They had told us on the phone that we could try and get there early and eat at the bar if we liked so we checked that out. We were going to do another SF City Guide tour (of the Ferry Building) at 5:30pm so had some time to kill. After circling around and around the place and spending some time sitting out back on the deck area by the bay and ferry boats we decided to get a slice of Scharffen Berger Chocolate Cake from Miette to share outside by the water. We had a nice view of the Bay Bridge and the commuters getting onto the ferries. The cake was luscious but very filling.
We took the City Guide tour of the Ferry Building and found out about the history of the building and that area. We were done in less than an hour and I was so full I thought I'd never eat anything ever again so we decided against going to the Slanted Door. A. was still hungry so he got a take-out dinner from one of the places there which he ate while we sat outside by the water. Before we left I bought a couple small rolls at the Acme Bread Company (of Berkeley) and a couple peaches from the Frog Hollow Farm's Farmer's Market stand which we took with us and jumped on the California Line cable car back to the hotel. Later that night I ate the rolls and a peach (A. ate the other peach) washed down with some cold Jasmine Green tea I had bought at Whole Foods earlier in the week. It was more than enough dinner. We were really tired and spent the evening hanging out in the hotel room.
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