Winter months are a good time to be a tourist in San Francisco. It’s the off-season, a period when dreary, cold days and long, misty nights keep the lines to one of the city’s favorite attractions shorter than usual.

Night tours of Alcatraz offer an intimate experience to the island that is only 12 minutes from Fisherman’s Wharf. From October to March, the Blue and Gold Fleet departs Pier 41 with roughly 300 passengers, half of what it normally carries, giving visitors easier access to explore the history of the famous island known as “the rock.”

At around 4:30 p.m., camera-laden visitors embark on the ferry that circles Alcatraz before docking at the entrance. A tour guide uses the remaining daylight to give a 20-minute narration while the boat cruises around the island. From the north side of the island, tourists see areas not normally accessible to them due to dilapidated buildings and broken glass surrounding the ground of the Industry Building where prisoners made furniture during the prison’s maximum-security years.

Jim Nelson, a research and volunteer coordinator for Alcatraz Night Tours, said the winter months allow more flexibility for visitors.

“It’s a lot easier to move around,” said Nelson, who leads roughly 60 tourists on a 25-minute up-hill walking tour that details Alcatraz’s history from a civil war fortress to a California state national park.

What tourists see in the nighttime is a spectacular panoramic view of San Francisco’s dazzling rhinestone-lit skyline, including sweeping views of the East Bay hills and Golden Gate Bridge.

“It is so beautiful at night,” said K. Livingston, of Brentwood, CA. “ I like how calm it looks from the top of the island.”

At the end of the walking tour, guests are led into the cell house where they purchase an audio tour spoken in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese or Spanish.

During peak season, Nelson said the cell house is very crowded, leaving many tourists competing for walking space. But on a cold evening, visitors are more concerned about keeping warm atop the island where the wind creates a howling sound through the long corridors and empty cells.

After the audio tour, there are specialty tours like the 1962 Escape Tour that retraces the steps of Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin, also know as the “Anglin brothers.”

Or visitors can relive the lonely existence of a guard walking the “gun gallery,” keeping a watchful eye on infamous criminals such as Al Capone or Robert Stroud. In 1931, Capone was sentenced to serve seven years on Alcatraz for tax evasion while Stroud, known as “the birdman,” murdered several men, including a bartender who allegedly didn't pay a prostitute he was pimping. Stroud earned the name “birdman” after he wrote a book about canaries and their diseases.

“It’s spooky at night,” said Shariyah Gaulding, also of Brentwood, CA. “Especially with the wind howling down the halls… you feel like it’s just you and the island.”

Night Tour Coordinator Nelson said the special tours are more personal and intimate and that the two and a half hours allotted for people to walk around the island is more than sufficient time to really get to know the full history of “the rock.”

Alcatraz night tours are available Thursday through Sunday. Tickets are $23.50 for adults 18-61. Children under five are free. Tickets can be purchased at the ticket sales office at Pier 41 or though Blue and Gold Fleet’s website, http://www.blueandgoldfleet.com or by calling 415-705-5555.