Night Boat to [Cairo] Alcatraz

Recently I was reminded that A, having lived in the Bay Area for a year and a half, had not yet been to THE ROCK. I, having grown up here, kind of forget that it exists and avoid tourist traps like the plague- unless there's a good reason. And never having seen it was a good reason, plus I hadn't been there since I was a teenager (ancient history!)

So I picked up a couple of tickets for the Alcatraz Night Tour. First of all, if you ever feel inclined to check it out, be sure to go through the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy website :

Not only to support local parks, but also because the price is $31.50, as opposed to the 40 or 50 dollar tourist-only prices you can find on local tour websites.

We went on Sunday afternoon in the hopes of finding free parking. Note to the interested: even the meters on Embarcadero have a two hour limit on Sundays! Fortunately we found street parking up by Coit Tower, which was well worth the small hike as the local lots were $12-20 just to park (yikes).

We took off on the boat close to 5pm, and had a nice view of the Bay & GG bridges. They do a scenic loop around the island so you can take all kinds of photos.

The tour itself was self-guided. This was fine with me because even in December, on a random Sunday evening there were 300 people on the boat! I shudder to think what it would be like in July!

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At any rate, the audio tour takes you through all of the cells and some of the common rooms. It gives you loads of history, and regales you with escape attempts and famous prisoner stories- which I enjoyed. It was, dare I say it, educational. I had never heard about the Indian occupation of the island for 19 months before it was made a national park- for example.

I chose the Night Tour after reading that it was supposed to be extra cool/spooky. And you know, it wasn't. But that's ok. The night view of downtown SF was spectacular. It was cold, and perfectly clear- and the downtown buildings are lit up for the holidays. I think the biggest difference between the night and day tours are the view. Of course if you hit a foggy day that would totally bite, but otherwise, equally good.

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