The Reeves Come to San Francisco! Part 2

We left the house around 6am on Thursday so that we could get to the North Concord BART station (ours was out of parking) with plenty of time to spare. Even though it takes a while, it was nice to ride BART and not have to worry about traffic or parking in the city. My younger siblings didn't have any experience with public transportation, so it was fun in that way too. We were riding on a car with broken doors because it was way less crowded. That was great until we got to our stop and couldn't all get off in time. Harris, Noah, Daniel, and Chloe (I think that's right) got off, and the rest of us yelled at them to not go anywhere, rode down to the next stop, and then rode back to where they were. It worked out fine, but it was a little scary.

When we got off, I was on the verge of peeing my pants and there were no bathrooms around and very few businesses were even open since it was so early. It reminded me of our trip to Stockholm and not in a good way. Haha! I handled myself much better this time though!
Anyway, we walked about a mile to the pier that the Alcatraz ferry leaves from. It was a nice, cool walk along the bay and we got there just as the ferry before ours left which was perfect.

Once we got to "the rock", we watched a short movie about Alcatraz and did a little "guided tour" (really just a walk up to the cell house with stops) about some of the escape attempts. It was pretty interesting. The funniest part was hearing everyone say, "awww" every time someone got caught. They were dangerous criminals! The audio tour for the cell house was fantastic! It was about 45 minutes and had clips from interviews with former guards/prisoners, recordings of cell doors slamming in the background, and tons of information. Even though it was incredibly crowded, I still got a little freaked out because the audio really brought the prison to life. Andrew only got to hear about half of it because Adaline wanted to listen and was really cranky from being tired. Andrew is such a sweetheart and didn't even complain. One day we'll have to go back so that he can hear the whole thing.

Andrew is being issued his prison shoes

A toilet, a sink, and a "bed." What more do you need?

This was in one of the isolation cells on "D block." The hinges on the right are for another door that blocks out all the light and noise so you're completely isolated.

The island has amazing views of the city. One of the worst things about Alcatraz was that the prisoners could see, and sometimes hear, the city and everything going on just beyond them but they couldn't be a part of it.

Taking a second to celebrate that we could both listen because BOTH kids were asleep!

the prison hospital

After we went through, we chatted with an old guard (that was neat!) in the gift shop and then met back up with my family. They wanted to go look at prison yard (where the prisoners would exercise and play sports) so we all went back inside and out to the yard.

Great views, but 1.5 miles of dangerous and cold ocean in between

Playing some prison baseball

We never did figure out what this was for, but my dad and I are guessing they made the really bad prisoners sit in there naked all night.

They got in trouble. Also, Adaline does have a body.

I'm surprised they even let him out.

Headed back to the city

When we got back, we walked to "The Codmother" to get some fish and chips per mom's request. It was a pretty long walk, but it went by quickly and the food was good. I don't even like fish and I ate all of mine.

Matthew and his aunt Chloe having a grand time. I'm pretty sure he's thinking about how badly he wants to eat her hair.

yup

Waiting for our food

Snuggling with Uncle Harris

They are just too precious

From here we walked back toward the water to tour the USS Pampanito-a submarine from the US Navy. "She completed six war patrols from 1944 to 1945 and served as a Naval Reserve Training ship from 1960 to 1971" according to Wikipedia. I can't even imagine living on there for months at a time with so many people. I would have an anxiety attack. It was neat to look at though, and no one else was on there at the time, so we could spend as long as we wanted to.

Even with the rope, it was a little freaky walking across the top of the sub. I also couldn't believe how much it rocked while it was docked. I can't imagine how bad it was out in the middle of the ocean!

Alcatraz is the island to Andrew's left.

My dad has a normal expression, what??

Matching flamingo shirts!

The beds looked so comfortable that Andrew fell asleep just looking at them.

I guess we're pretending to play checkers?

How cute are they?!

Next we walked to Chinatown. San Francisco has the largest chinatown outside of Asia and the oldest one in North America. We should have done our homework before we went because it was so huge, we didn't even know what to do there. Mom got some ginger candies and coconut candies (both super tasty) and she a Chloe got a couple trinkets. We also stopped at a fortune cookie "factory." It was probably the size of my living room, but we got to eat some warm fortune cookie circles, before they were folded and that was a tasty treat. My mom also bought a bag of fortune cookies and while the cookies tasted mediocre, they had some of the most creative fortunes!

We were all so tired from walking all day, that we pretty much walked straight through Chinatown and headed back to the BART station. When we got there, we couldn't get out of the station because we had taken the escalator (because of the stroller) and our tickets didn't show that we had gotten off in the city. I was surprised they didn't have a good way to fix it, but it ended up working out okay.

Waiting for BART

Andrew and I took the kids home and put them in bed, while my family went to raid the bulk section at WinCo. Then we all watched "Escape from Alcatraz". It was really fun to watch it after being there just that day. We all slept great after such a busy day!

I had planned for Friday to be an "around the house" day since I thought we might still be tired from the day before. This worked out well for Chloe since she was sick, but apparently mom and the boys got bored because she took them to play laser tag. Those of us that stayed home watched Psych (this was a favorite pastime over the whole week), did laundry, and tried to calm down Matthew during his crying episode. Adaline recovered from the week by taking a 3 hour nap. When mom got back, Andrew, Dad, and I went to pick up pizza for dinner. It was fun to get out of the house with just them. They're both goofy and our trip involved some races at the grocery store and probably lots of looks from strangers.

Adaline read her new Easter book (from Gram) to Matthew

After dinner and my babies going to bed, we decorated easter eggs and sugar cookies and then watched some more Psych.

This was a well timed picture. Andrew is giggling at what he just did, Daniel is realizing what happened, and Noah is trying not to laugh. This picture cracks me up every time.

He takes cookie decorating very seriously

Saturday morning we had golden rod eggs to use up some of the easter eggs we had dyed. Then everyone helped clean up the house before we watched the first session of conference. They had to leave when it was over and it was so hard to say good-bye! Please come again soon!