"San Francisco" a San Francisco Travel Page by rsilva

Our second stop in the US Trip was San Francisco. It is one of those places you hear so much about so you go there with very high expectations.
I was not dissapointed. It is a very lively city and European in a way (the cable cars, architecture, etc), I actually found a lot of similarities with Lisbon:

- The Golden Gate bridge, looks just like the one over the "Tejo" river (if I remember correctly it was designed by the same people).
- The cable cars
- All the hills
- The waterfront

Not that I was looking for Europe in the US, but it was nice to feel "at home" in a way, specially since I don't live in Portugal anymore.

But this is as far as the similarities go.

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View from Alcatraz

The rock

One of the most famous attractions here is the Alcatraz prison. It was the "home" to many famous prisioners and has been features in several movies.

We went for the night tour (see tip: "Alcatraz by night" ) and it was really interesting.

I remember the tour guide mentioning that the hardest thing for the prisioners was being "so close but yet so far". Observing the view from the island, I understand exactly what they felt.

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Rotating the car

The streetcars/cable cars

It's a great feeling to hang on the outside of one of the famous streetcars. We took the Hyde & Powell line up to Lombard street (the world's crookedest street) and it was a very nice ride, but do your best to stand up as sitting down will be missing out on the half the fun.

An interesting thing is to see how the cars are turned around when they reach the end of the line: they are manually rotated on a platform (see picture).