The tour of the building was made much more interesting by the audio component, which had lots of history and details from former inmates. The prison building itself is very small compared to the size of the island, but I guess they didn't need to waste a lot of space on housing prisoners if they only get a few square feet each. There's not much else to see on the island, besides a film (which was pretty dull -- I think I'll go rent The Rock again to spice up my impression of the place).

Click here to see the nice view of the San Francisco skyline from Alcatraz.




A final thought while leaving Alcatraz: I'd never been in a prison before (operating or not) and I'd like to leave it that way. Alcatraz was closed in the 1960s and has basically rotted away since then, but I can't imagine it was all that peachy even when it was running.