Let’s plan our great escape from Alcatraz

Alcatraz.

It’s one of those mythical places in the United States that was home to some of the most notorious criminals of their time, including Machine Gun Kelly and gangster Al Capone.

The Island is located in the San Francisco Bay, 1.25 miles (2.01 km) offshore, so for visitors, you take the Alcatraz Ferry out to see the action.

We woke up to an incredibly foggy, hazy morning in San Francisco. The air was definitively cool.

Dressed most inappropriately for a boat ride, we shivered together. Pack a jumper kids.

Approaching Alcatraz Island is a surreal experience. You’ve seen the movies. You know vaguely what’s happened behind the walls, but it’s a whole new experience visiting.

If anything, it looks extremely haunted.

YUP. All the ghosty feels.

We approached the island and docked. Joe and I, well we’re kind of nerds so we wanted to be the first people on the tour of the island. (I did the same thing with visiting Harry Potter at Universal, so that’s kind of my thing).

There are also birds EVERYWHERE. And if you’re like me and have semi terrors if a bird is within any proximity to you, you’re going to struggle. My real fears were coming to life on Alcatraz Island already.

Great.

Your boat of happy morning people arrive and are greeted by one of the park rangers, because hey-o it’s a National Park of California and ahem – the most popular thing to do in San Francisco according to Tripadvisor so they tell you. The park is undoubtedly, really pleased with themselves for that feat. (I won’t tell them that it’s now the Golden Gate Bridge, because they are genuinely adorable about it).

So you walk into the park and are shown this pretty incredible film on Alcatraz produced by National Geographic. They also sway you with their movies. Alcatraz was already winning with their tour efforts.

In the movie you get a brief history of the place, because let’s face it, when we learn about these places as kids, it rarely sticks with us. A trip to Alcatraz itself however, will.

From the movie we learned about it’s origins before the Big Bang and how the valley flooded and that’s how San Francisco exists today. We learned about the start of the prison, the closure, and then the occupation of the Native Americas to claim back the land in the 70s. The place is brimming full of history, and now we all get to check it out ourselves.

From the film, you then walk in for a guided audio tour through the prison. This is a MUST. You get headsets, walk around the prison, learn along the way, and see the entire place all in one go. It. Is. Brilliant.

Feedback that I’d had before visiting was that if you do one thing in San Francisco, make it a trip to Alcatraz. I don’t disagree.

It’s not exactly the type of place you envision spending the later years of your life…

But um, if anything, it looks like the inmates had some phenom breakfasts.

We left the island as the weather started to warm up.

And they let us escape out from the island of Alcatraz (somehow).

Kelly xoxo