San Francisco held a special bonus for me. My two daughters had flown in from Dublin and London, for a week’s holiday. Joyful reunion in the city by the bay. 

   
 You don’t need any special fitness regime, when you live in San Francisco. Just go out and walk to the corner. You’ll have done the equivalent of four flights of stairs and, if still alive, will be aerobically excercised for the week. But it’s a lovely city. 

   
 So out we went. Up the mountain. Over the top. Down the other side.  Then, if that wasn’t enough, we hired bikes. Bikes, if you don’t mind. Tandems actually. Yes, we hired bikes and went for a cycle tour of the city. For this, we wisely (in my opinion), stuck to the habour front and along the pier area, where it is flat and cycle friendly. Until !!  Until the challenge of crossing the Golden Gate bridge arose. There is a steep climb to get onto the bridge. The cycle path across is just about wide enough for two bikes to pass. That’s if we weren’t flopping about and stopping to take pictures, at all the narrowest points. This did not, in any way, ingratiate us to the very proffessional looking bikers, (i.e. Those severe and unhappy looking individuals, dressed in velcro).  They wore a permanent scowl, and stared at us, with looks of total contempt, as they shot by at a rate of knots. Never mind. We made it across and then down a steep decline to Sausalito for some gorgeous mussels and beer. We took the ferry back. It seemed the wiser option.

  
Next day, and off to Alcatraz. A military fortress, then a prison, now a tourist venue. This is a very interesting spot. The self guided audio tour, is narrated by ex prison staff and inmates and is really well put together. They say that no-one ever escaped from the prison and survived the cold, strong currented water, though there are a few unaccounted for and thus a mythology is born. There is a natural sense of pity for those convicts, who could look across the bay to the city full of life and know they couldn’t touch it. On the other hand, you have to remember that the prisoners here were the worst of the worst. They said that, “If you break the rules, you go to prison. If you break the prison rules, you go to Alcatraz”. I was glad to get on the ferry and back to noise, action and good food, in San Fran. 

Next stop, Los Angeles, city of the angels.