San Francisco Pictures & Wrap-up

Okaaay, so here are the photos!

Shirt I bought in the Fisherman's Wharf Area

awesome view! My phone doesn't make the best pictures
and there was a lot of fog
but it was AMAZING!

Alcatraz Island

The ship that got us to Alcatraz

One of the cells

once of the cells from the outside

A hallway with cells

The abandoned/broken down guard house

View from Alcatraz

more view from Alcatraz

A tower--a lighthouse on Alcatraz

San Francisco as seen from Alcatraz--maybe my favourite picture
of the trip!

So that's what we did on day one.

The Golden Gate Bridge as seen from the other side
looking towards Sausalito

The next day, we walked to the ferry station and took a ferry to Sausalito, where the Golden Gate Bridge is, and then the public bus (it was a horribly tight fit to get 50 students and 5 teachers onto the public transit, let me tell you) to the beginning of the Golden Gate Bridge, from where we walked across.

It was beautiful--the scenery is stunning and our group was stretched out so we were almost all by ourselves, and I took lots of pictures of the bridge.

The view of Sausalito from the Bridge

About half-way through, though, my throat started hurting; later on it turned out I had caught a cold from the air conditioning on the bus!

We then went to Amoeba Records, which is a CD and Vinyl store and was incredibly boring, but well, what can ya do? It was a Rock History Trip, too!

Half of our group proceeded to the Haight-Ashbury corner, a famous street intersection for Rock History fans (I don't know what happened there, I am sorry), while the rest of us went downtown San Francisco for shopping.



I am not a big shopping fan and my feet hurt terribly from the special soled I have in my shoes, but even shopping was more desirable than ambling around the streets--there were obvious drug addicts (one guy was rocking back and forth, trying to eat his own foot!) and strange people (one woman stopped me and my friend and wanted to sell us something, and we were both in shock until I touched her arm and said, pretty unconvincingly, "Hey, we gotta go and find our group, it's time already" and pulled her away.), so we spent our time actually looking at clothes in Forever 21.

I bought a shirt and some earrings:

I really like those!

Go Owls!

The traditional one is a must-have!

We took a very ancient tram home, and then it had been planned to eat dinner at the hard rock cafe, but we decided to simply buy some shirts and then go to Subway (incredibly cheaper).

Facebook address

The next day started at 7 a.m., but I had spent half the night awake because my throat was sore, had written something on my phone and submitted it to tumblr, who simply ate my post--my one hour of writing gone and I can't remember what exactly I wrote, because I was pretty tired :(

Because I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep, though, I managed to forget both my wallet and my sunglasses in the hostel, but my teacher let me borrow some money off her.

We went to see facebook headquarters and took pictures in front of the sign (it's very unexciting) and then had a walk over Stanfort Univeristy campus, where I also bought a hoodie and a shirt, because the logo has German in it--Der Wind der Freiheit weht, or in English, the wind of freedom blows.



After that, we went to an outlet mall, but I a) didn't have any money and b) was feeling very sick and c) it was incredibly hot outside (my guess would be around 35 degrees Celsius; I wore sun screen with SPF 50 and still got slightly burnt!) so I just sat in the shadows (I also couldn't really talk that day, because my throat was very scratchy)

The AT&T Park

And the inside!

After that, we went to a baseball game, which was both cold and boring--baseball simply isn't my sport.

I had a real baseball hot dog, though, and the atmosphere was quite stunning--especially hilarious was the guy sitting on the empore next to us.

He was already tipsy when the game started, exuberant but surprisingly coherent, and it just got worse more hilarious as the game went on.

He kept starting chants, for example "Let's go Gi-ants" and our students body answered that chant with the same words, effectively drowning out the lone Dodger's fan next to that guy.

In the end, our students (some of them at least) went up to him and got photos with him!

I could neither shout (because of my throat) nor see a lot (it was very far away), so I was miserable and cold and bored and desperately wishing I had brought my kindle.

I did not break out my kindle until the airport! But everyone was tired and a tiny bit cranky there, so I thought it would be best to keep myself occupied.

The Giants won, 10-9 in (fortunately) the first extra-inning; it had been tied after nine innings, even though the Giants had been up 6-0 at one point.
And they even scored a home run!

Still, four and a half hours for that outcome felt almost like we'd been cheated. Baseball definitely is not my sport.

We arrived back at the hostel at 11:30 pm, and had to leave the hostel at 5 the next morning, so we put our alarm clocks on 4 am and packed up our luggage (It was a tight fit! I've never before bought so much clothes in one trip!).

I woke up the next morning to somebody saying, "Wake up, Julia, it's already 4:30"--we had all overslept!
Nobody had heard the alarms! (As in, multiple alarms)

We took the plane back home, and it was a nice trip--and I was even able to catch the first period of my team playing hockey, it was awesome!

So yeah, and that's it.

I hope you enjoyed my description and the photos!

Have a great night,

Julia