Photo Essay -My trip to San Fransisco

This photo essay is about my trip to San Francisco. I went there during the time I was living in Oregon (I think it was during the spring break at my middle school in 2013) so I didn't have to ride on the airplane for as long as it would have taken to go there from Korea. During this trip with my family, I was able to see famous bridges like the 'Golden Gate Bridge' and the 'Bay Bridge'. I think the most exciting part of this trip was seeing Alcatraz with my own eyes.

The 'Golden' Gate bridge

This picture is one I took of the Golden Gate bridge. Me and my brother were a little bit disappointed because it wasn't golden at all. We expected it to be all shiny and stuff but the bridge itself was more like 'The Red-Orange Gate Bridge'. My brother thought it was named that way because saying the real color would be way too long and I agreed. But we all thought it was really awesome to see the bridge connecting to parts of land that were separated by water early in the morning. I woke up at 5 am for some reason that day and I woke everyone up while trying to get off the high hotel bed (in the extremely dangerous process, at some point my legs gave away and I fell on the floor). My knees can get a bit wobbly when I try to walk in the morning. anyways, we all just went outside for a fresh walk and I could see the Golden Gate bridge far away. It looked like a movie scene with all the mist around it. I had really wanted to see the "Golden" Gate bridge before and this was a really nice moment for me.

Fisherman's Wharf

Fisherman's Wharf was developed during the Gold Rush, and got it's name from many fishermen who set up camp in the area and fished for some kind of crab called the Dungeness Crab. There were a lot of restaurants with crabs, but for some reason, we didn't eat crab and got something else that I don't even remember now. When we were at the Fisherman's Wharf, everything smelled like sea water. But except for that, everything was new and there were a lot of things to look at.

Cable Cars in SF

The unique thing about San Francisco, was that it had cable cars. There were as many as buses are around in other cities. It was sure a big part of their tourist attraction since the line to ride the cable cars were just too long. I think we waited for like one-and-a-half hours to two hours to ride it on the second day. It was pretty interesting how they still have those cable cars even though San Francisco is a really big city. It was really cool to ride in cable cars and if you ever get a chance to ride one in San Francisco, I suggest that you ride it standing up because when you sit down you can feel the weird vibration which makes you get up and check if there are bugs under you. It's not a very nice feeling. I heard that the cable cars in San Francisco are the only mobile National Monument in the world. The cable cars made San Francisco look like two places at the same time. With all the tall buildings and the old-fashioned cable cars, it made San Francisco look like it existed in two different time periods.

Clam Chowder :)

We had lunch at some place called 'Boudin'. It was actually from a flour company and they made really great sourdough bread. We had clam chowder and it's as good as it looks. If you get a chance to go to San Francisco, you should get some clam chowder. I don't really know about the sourdough bread though. It tastes really weird unless you eat it with balsamic oil or something.

Alcatraz

Alcatraz was where I wanted to visit the most. I've read some books about Alcatraz before like 'Al Capone does my shirts'. Which is about a boy who's dad works as a prison patrol police. I also watched TV show called the 'Myth Busters'. They always do these crazy experiments and tests to see if the myths are true or not. One of them was a test about the Alcatraz escape. Alcatraz is a prison on a small island close to San Francisco. This was a prison that kept the worst of all criminals. There were criminals like Arthur 'Doc' Barker, George 'Machine Gun' Kelly, 'Big' Al Capone, and Meyer 'Mickey' Cohen. There were numerous escape attempts made by the inmates, but they all ended with a failure. However there were some rumors about some people who were able to escape. They were Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers. Myths suggest that they escaped on a small boat made out of the rubbery raincoats they were given during their life in prison. The Myth Busters actually tried that by making a boat with only what the escapees had. Surprisingly it worked, and since Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers were never found, either alive or dead they could still be in hiding. We didn't go into the prison which apparently still has the dummies that the escapees put in their beds to buy them some time. But it was still creepy by just looking at the isolated prison on the tour boat.


I really like the trip to San Francisco. I think I learned some really interesting things during the trip and had lots of fun with my family. In the future, you might want to visit San Francisco with your family, friends, or alone (I recommend that if you want to go inside Alcatraz, you should probably go with someone else because it is pretty creepy around there) and have some fun!


*All the photos were taken by me except for the clam chowder one because for some reason, I didn't take pictures of clam chowder. I think it was already late when I remembered, since it was already halfway gone:).