San Francisco Bay Cruise

San Francisco Bay Cruise

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for June 26, 2016

We flew to San Francisco for a week long vacation on June 25th.  Since we are obsessed with taking photos and took over 1100 photos on my camera alone, I have decided to break up the trip and do a separate post for each of our days of vacation as we explored the California coast.  I hope you enjoy the photos!!

We met my sister, Tracy Mohar, and her husband, Dave, for the trip.  We travel well together.

Our kids are pretty close in age so they like to hang out.  And create trouble together. 

I found this sign at Scoma's restaurant pretty interesting.  Handicapped and Disabled people?  I'd like someone to explain to me the difference...

San Francisco is full of interesting people.  And a lot more dogs than I realized.

On our first morning in town, we woke up early and explored Fisherman's Wharf.

We ate breakfast at a local cafe to give us energy for a lot of walking around the town.

Our first trip was a cruise around San Francisco Bay.  We were supposed to go for a tour of Alcatraz as well, but got screwed by the good folks at www.alcatraztickets.com.   They sold us the cruise tickets immediately, but said the Alcatraz tickets couldn't be booked until shortly before our trip.  They then notified us a couple weeks before our trip that the Alcatraz tours were oversold and not available to us.  We tried to buy them 5 weeks before our trip, but realized we got snookered and overpaid for the cruise instead.  Oh well, the cruise was still a bunch of fun and we learned a lesson for next time.

Even though we didn't get to stop at the island, we were still all very excited to see the bay.

Our ship looked pretty solid which is always on my checklist before going out on the ocean.

They had an audio tour which was pretty informative about San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and other interesting details of our trip.  Awww, who am I kidding.  The headsets blared a healthy dose of static in my ears for the first 15 minutes of the trip before I finally said "Screw It" and put them back on the shelf.

So instead, I had an awesome time enjoying the sites and sounds of the bay with my lovely wife, Miss Sheri, and my family.

The Golden Gate bridge is a fascinating structure.  It is so impressive staring at it while sitting on a boat on the rough waters, enduring the winds, waves, and fog and wondering how difficult it must have been to build the darn thing.

The kids seemed to like it too judging by the number of selfies they were taking with it.

Birds ride for free.

Alcatraz looked very cool as we floated close by it.  I regretted again our inability to explore it as I watched all the people walking around the buildings.  Next time we are in San Francisco, I'm going to figure out way to get back to this prison even if I have to commit a crime to do it.

I wonder how many prisoners were shot from this guard tower?

A Light House?  On Alcatraz Island?

Sheri and the boys liked the Bay Tour very much.

  

It is so hard to get Pelicans to pose like this.

Back on shore we did synchronized spitting from the pier.

Our day in San Francisco came to an end, but not before we had the opportunity to drive by the Gay Pride Celebration that was happening on nearby Market Street.  We wanted to do more than just drive by, but couldn't fit it into our schedule.  They seemed like a bunch of fun people.