U.S.P.: Alcatraz Island

        So this was definitely the most exciting part of my trip to the city on the Bay, together with Golden Gate and the Cable Cars. I did this on my last day (yesterday, Monday) luckily I figured out that you have to book those kind of trips in advance  online because they sell out very quickly (in summer one week in advance!) even though the cruise ship leaves every half an hour from the pier. My tour started at 12:00pm, after 20min journey through the bay we arrived at the dock on Alcatraz Island aka "The Rock". It was very nice to see how the nature was taking back what once got taken by humans when they used the island as a Fortress to control the entry of ships to the bay when the Gold Rush was in its height around 1850. And it's because Alcatraz Island became a National Park (part of Golden Gate National Park) not because it was a Federal Prision but because it served as a Fortress. 

          Chasing after birds or taking things from the island, as it is a National park, is strongly prohibited, also because the seagulls were in reproduction season: hundreds of seagulls live on the island now and if you look closer you can see little baby seagulls. 

          I have to admit that Alcatraz Penitentiary as a tourist attraction is, obviously, pretty crowded, but the good thing is that once you get the audio tour and you start walking through the cellhouse you almost completely forget that you are surrounded by people as you get spellbound by an amazing 45min story told you by people who used to work there, grow up on the island (as child's of the officers) or being an inmate. 

         Together with sound effects and incredible stories about attempts to escape from the Island and about some of the most famous inmates as Al Capone was, the audio tour was definitely the highlight of my visit to The Rock. Now my goal is to watch lots of Alcatraz movies to see how Hollywood brought to cinema three decades of the most famous and feared Prision of the Sates or including the world.