Well, I’ve made it. After my parents got married and ran off to California, I came along a few years later and came into this world in Los Angeles. Conveniently born on the same day my parents were supposed to be moving, I delayed their move to the Southeast for a few months (sorry mom & dad!). I grew up in the sweetness of Southern hospitality with my Detroit-native parents (I say “eggs” like a Canadian) who probably never expected me to end up just a hop and a skip away from my birthplace.

To commemorate the momentous return of yours truly to the West Coast (best coast? We’ll see.) I, my mother, and my Grammie are making our way from blustery but beautiful San Francisco down to Los Angeles, where we’ll be parting ways when I head to Catalina Island. This and my next couple posts will be all about our adventures along the Pacific coastline.

After a long, turbulent flight with beautiful views of the Sierras, we touched down at SFO and began an epic quest to get a rental car. We succeeded. We braved the infamous California highways and made our way to our hotel near Fisherman’s Wharf. Another success. We tried to not look like tourists. We failed.

After a stop at In-N-Out with everyone else in the city we hurried over to Alcatraz Island. Ever since I read Al Capone Does My Shirts as a kid, I’ve been fascinated with the island. This seemingly desolate chunk of limestone in the middle of San Francisco Bay was surprisingly lovely, with a beautiful variety of flowers, plants, and seabirds. The carefully tended gardens have been there for over a century, and were tended by convicts and the families of the prison staff who lived on the island alike. The 13-story climb to the top included incredible views of the city and the bay, and ended at the top at the main cell block (see picture above).

We entered the prison and embarked on a very well-done and informative audio tour (I highly recommend it!) which led us through all the main parts of the prison. We learned about the daily lives of the government employees and prisoners on the island and relived the tension of the attempted escapes from the prison. Apparently three prisoners stole spoons from the mess hall and gradually chipped away the re-enforced concrete walls around their air vents, coordinated an escape time, and even went so far to make dummy painted heads to leave in their beds, which actually tricked the guards into thinking they were still in bed. One of the escapees starved himself to be able to squeeze through the opening, and, under the cover of darkness they slipped through the vents into the utility corridor on June 11, 1962. They clambered up several stories of piping and headed to sea on a raft into the freezing waters and brutal currents of the San Francisco Bay. The raft was later found on Angel Island (also in the bay), but no one knows if they managed to survive. Most likely drowned in the freezing waters of the bay, but it still remains “plausible” that they managed to escape.

Can you imagine feeling so miserable and restricted that you would risk everything, with an incredibly low chance of success, just for a shot at escaping? Pictures and words simply can’t capture the dank, depressing air and the squeal and clank of 250-lb steel cell doors slamming shut.

Not that I really needed any motivation to keep me from robbing banks or murdering people, but jail is somewhere I never want to be. The solitary confinement cells, here shown with doors open, were closed with an incredibly thick steel door with the tiniest of windows, and inmates were left in darkness, but where they could still hear the laughter and fireworks of parties in San Francisco drifting across the bay – pure torture. I believe prisons still have quite a ways to go in regards to rehabilitation, but I am so glad we’ve moved past this era of harrowing confinement.

Having done our time on Alcatraz, we moved on to the much more cheerful sights and sounds of Pier 39. Along with those sights and sounds came the wall of stench that announced the presence of the California Sea Lions, which, though stinky, still seem utterly huggable to me.

This was followed by a stop at a fruit stand, where we ate some of the most delicious and beautiful strawberries I have ever seen:

We then embarked on a quest for a restaurant called The Melt, which I found out was supposed to have one of the top 10 best grilled cheeses in America (thanks roommates for the article!). After a 30-minute walk that included a lovely stroll through the ghost town of a financial district (it was Memorial Day), we finally found the restaurant, only to discover it was closed for the holiday. Thus, now feeling the full weight of the 3-hour time change and our crazy day of traveling and touring, we trudged off in the direction of the hotel, hoping to find somewhere to eat on the way. Fun fact: San Francisco, a 7×7 mile city, has so many restaurants that you could eat at a different restaurant 3x a day everyday for 3 years and never eat at the same place twice. It has the most restaurants per capita in the world!

Our walk took us past the Trans-America Tower and into China Town. I was enthralled by the smell of fresh dumplings in every direction, but we quickly discovered we had wandered into the red light district and bee-lined out of it. We came upon Little Italy, and found a majestic yet casual Italian restaurant called Colosseo (the website pictures do it much more justice than I ever can). Giant gladiator statues greeted us at the door, and the ceiling and walls featured hand-painted Renaissance-style murals. We feasted on minestrone, pesto gnocchi, and red wine – a satisfying end to a satisfying day.

Tuesday morning we started out the day with the best darn berry-covered waffles I’ve ever ate, and jumped on the obnoxiously touristy but ridiculously fun and informative open-air sightseeing bus. We drove all over the bay area and across the Golden Gate bridge, made our way through downtown and slid through Golden Gate park and the intersection of Haight-Ashbury. Fun fact: the Golden Gate Bridge is not named so because of its not-really-even-any-type-of-gold color, but because every ship rushing into San Francisco during the gold rush in the 1800’s had to pass through the straight the bridge spans to reach port. We then continued the epic grilled cheese quest by hopping on one of the historic trolleys and headed for union square. I don’t usually selfie, but the occasion called for it… Note Alcatraz in the distance:

And guess what? WE MADE IT. We found The Melt. IT WAS OPEN. And I got the most amazing life-changing kind of spiritual-moment sandwich of my life: The Mac Daddy – Grilled cheese with mac & cheese and bacon in the middle. Oof. We saw and did lots of awesome things today, but I have to say, getting that grilled cheese was certainly a high point.

We hopped back on the big red bus and swept through the beautiful Golden Gate park, past the Victorian Painted Ladies, and breezed down Haight Street, and made our way back to the Wharf. I wish we had time to get off and explore the park, but, on the other hand, I probably would have spent my entire day there and at the adjacent museums and would have missed everything else. I’ll save it for a future trip!

Delightfully worn out after another day of adventure, we wandered in and out of shops, grabbed some tacos for dinner, and wandered along the wharf some more. We went into a puzzle shop where I ultimately unsuccessfully battled a 3-D puzzle (it will haunt me forever until I solve it!), and met a friendly local, Elliot. He chatted with us about his experience living and working in San Francisco, and joined us for a doughnut at a little shop Grammie had her mind on all day. The fresh-out-of-the-fryer minis were another perfect ending to a fantastic day.