Alcatraz Prison looms high on a small rocky island out in San Francisco Bay. This historic jail, is a very popular tourist site, and at busy times tickets sell out quickly, so it is better to book tickets in advance.
There is a good choice of daytime tours around Alcatraz, and some night tours during the evening that offer a rather different experience, with extra talks and eerie exhibits.
Alcatraz Island is accessible by boat from Pier 33, The Embarcadero, on the eastern waterfront of the Port of San Francisco. It can be quite cold on board the boat, and on the island, so warm windproof wear is recommended. The short ferry trip affords wonderful views of San Francisco, and of the Golden Gate Bridge, but there is always the possibility of dense fog rolling in, adding to the spooky atmosphere of the prison tour.
There is a very steep walk up to the prison when you arrive at Alcatraz Island, but a trolley car service is available for anyone with poor health or mobility problems. The island itself is a designated National Park, and the park rangers act as tour guides, taking visitors up to the prison.
A short introductory video can be viewed in one of the buildings, and every visitor receives a headset for the audio tour when they enter the prison itself. These self guided tours start off at different times, and allow visitors go at their own pace, so they are not all bunched together.
The audio tour provides realistic background sound effects, and the history of the island is told in the words and voices of former prison officers and ex-inmates. These give out some fascinating facts about the inmates, the officers who guarded them, and the officers’ families who lived on the island.
Visitors to Alcatraz Prison can walk around the ground floor, see into the cells, visit the library and the eating area, look into the kitchen and look out at the recreation ground. Visitors can also walk through the officers rooms, and see the control room. There are further opportunities of seeing a solitary confinement cell, watching a lockdown demonstration, viewing cells from which some prisoners made their escape in 1962, and finding the actual cell where Al Capone was imprisoned.
The basic audio tour of Alcatraz Prison takes forty-five minutes, but up to three hours should be allowed for a visit. Much more time will be needed to explore all the other parts of Alcatraz Island. At the end of the prison tour there is a gift store selling souvenirs, and a more general store can be found near the dock area.
There are several non-stopping boat trip around Alcatraz Island, but the only cruize that includes a tour of Alcatraz Prison is operated by the Parks Department. There is more information to be found on http://www.alcatrazcruises.co m/ the official National Park Service Alcatraz web site.
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