Waking up to Alcatraz

The San Francisco living room I crashed in had three picture windows and the view that you're seeing below is what I woke up to every morning.  Isn't it brilliant?  Now, the sky didn't look like this every day but the day that it did, whew!  It took my breath away.  In the first picture, you can see Alcatraz.  The second picture is Coit Tower.  In the third picture, if you look closely, you can see a cruise ship docked.  It was spectacular to see them at night, with their lights twinkling and the white hull glowing like a giant seabird on the pier.

Amazingly, this is also the second story of the apartment building.  My friend lives on Russian Hill and it was so steep that only one side of the building had a first floor.  I felt an overwhelming sense of vertigo every morning that I stepped out of the building on to the street.  Oh and instead of a sidewalk, there were stairs, which made for a good workout every day.

I was going to stay in a hotel on the fringe of the Tenderloin (really glad I didn't end up doing that) but there is no way I would have ended up with a view like this.  It was relaxing just sitting in the living room, watching the ships crawl through the bay.