We finally got our act together and booked a trip to Alcatraz on November 5th. I’d previously tried in the summer but tour space is limited and there was never any room. Even for the November date I had to book several weeks in advance. However, it was super interesting and I’m very glad we finally did it.
We took the ferry over and then got the audio tour, which we’d heard was really good. It did not disappoint! Here are some pictures of our visit.
Dreary!
This was the library.
Kitchen, with knife diagrams so the guards could easily tell if one was missing.
The buildings have not held up to the weather very well.
The audio tour did a great job explaining the different escape attempts, and they’d recreated the cells of the prisoners who famously tried to escape — especially the ones they never found.
Here’s a shot of the boys after we left the main prison building.
And here is an outside shot looking back at San Francisco.
After the tour we walked around for a little bit, but everyone was getting pretty hungry by that time. We took the next ferry back to the city and had lunch there. Here’s a shot from the ferry. The skies were finally clearing.
And here’s a shot looking back at Alcatraz.
I don’t think it’s something I need to do more than once, but I’m really happy we went!