San Francisco (part II)

On the second day in San Francisco, we went to the very classic (but somehow unavoidable) visit of Alcatraz. We had booked tickets in advance, so we just met Masayuki at the port and started the visit.

The visit obviously starts by a small boat trip to the island.

Heading to Alcatraz

The good thing with the boat trip, is that you have a nice view on the bridge ... or not ...

Still in the cloud ...

Never mind ... we'll try again later !
Arriving in the island on a cloudy/rainy day, makes you feel even better how hard the conditions had to be in the prison. And yet, this prison was not considered as the one with the worst conditions - especially the food was said to be quite good. But still.

A corridor in the oldest part - a fort dating back to the Secession War

A cell

I don't remember the "street name", but there were 3 like this, with cells on 3 levels, and a clever system to open the gates.

A funny fact is that we took the audio-guides in 3 languages : Masayuki in Japanese, Laura in Spanish, and I took English, and the one in Spanish was much, much slower, as Laura's visit took like 20 minutes more ! This is because the Spanish was actually South American Spanish, and they do speak slower than the Spanish Spanish !
So, we went on the visit, and I found two dangerous inmates ...

Laura "Spanish Butcher" Santos, a crazy-looking murderer

Masayuki Hara, aka "Hara-sensei" ("The professor"), a cold-blooded murderer, high-risk inmate as it reads on his hoodie.

Inmate Masayuki going in his high-security cell.

Oustide the prison, there is actually a nice view on San Francisco, and apparently it was the most difficult for the prisoners ... They could hear, see, almost smell the "free life" in San Francisco, and it was like a psychological torture ...

View of SF from Alcatraz

Entrance of the administration building. The "Free" sign is a rest of the Indian occupation, after the prison was closed.

The control room. Kinda like the ATLAS control room, isn't it ?

Finally we went back to SF, using the same boat ... Wait, I can see that dangerous Japanese prisoner there !!

In the next post, various photos from the city of San Francisco ... Will it still be cloudy ? Will it rain ? Suspense ...