April 3, 2023

Today, we had a quick breakfast at Honey Honey creperie before catching our bus for our excursion of the day. We went on an Alcatraz with Sausalito and Muir Woods Excursion, again booked on Viator. Once on our bus, we stopped quickly before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge to get pictures with a beautiful view of the bridge. We had similar views on our bike tour. After crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, we headed to Muir Woods. Our tour guide, Ben, was basically in charge of getting us from point to point, but did not guide us through any stop on our trip.

Muir Woods National Monument is part of the Redwood Forest and the Golden Gate Bridge National Park. It was a nice little park with easily passable trails of various lengths. It was very chilly and I couldn’t wait to get back to the gift shop to get some hot coffee (or Tea as it turned out). After this part of the tour, we met Ben and the rest of our group and went to Sausalito. We ate at a nice Mexican restaurant and did a little shopping. Ben then drove us back to San Francisco. He gave us our ticket to get on the Alcatraz ferry and left us for the day.

Once we got off the Alcatraz ferry, we headed to the Main Building to get the Cell House Audio Tour. The Cell House is the main attraction and there is limited things to see outside of this tour. I would plan on spending about 2 hours at Alcatraz, including the Cell House tour. Take note of the times of the return ferries, as they only run every half hour and are on time. Alcatraz also has special exhibits on the Indian Occupation and Mass incarceration that are interesting and worth the time.

In retrospect, I would not do this pre-packaged tour again, but would book the tours to Muir Woods, Sausalito, and Alcatraz on my own. All of these events could have been booked separately, much cheaper. I would highly recommend pre-booking your Alcatraz trip here. You do not need a travel tour to do this for you. Getting to and from the pier for the excursion is easy and doable on your own. Muir woods is great, but had I known what I was looking at, I would have simply added it on to our day at Sausalito after our bike ride, before taking the ferry back to San Francisco. There is a tour company offering busing to and from Sausalito to Muir Woods. We could have saved a lot of time and money booking this on our own. After our tour, we went back to the hotel and rested before Dinner. We ate dinner at McCormick & Kuleto’s at Fisherman’s Wharf. The restaurant offered steak and seafood and beautiful views of the bay.