Yes, it is true.
Unfortunately we were denied a true Seattle experience. We have been here for 4 days and each one of
them has been brilliantly fine and beautiful.
We are simply unable to comment on Seattle’s reputation as being grey,
overcast, cloudy and drizzly. Each day
we have been able to see Mt Rainier in all of its glory, and see from the
Cascades to the Olympics (both snow-capped mountain ranges).
The morning started slightly earlier than we have been
getting used to as we had to take the car back.
We headed out towards the airport and the car place was very nice about
our returning the car. They even gave us
a refund for part of the time that we had the Garmin GPS as we’d been told that
it only had Californian maps when we called up to complain. The guy at the desk was puzzled about all of
that as he knew how to use it and had it calling up Oregon and Washington
addresses in a flash. At least the
person that I called had noted that she had told me that it only had California
maps on the computer system. They then
had a shuttle that took us to the airport so we could catch a train back into
town.
The train ride was interesting, getting to see even more of
Seattle (including some not-so-flash bits).
Once we were at the railway station in town, we thought that we would
check out where we needed to be tomorrow morning as we had to be there at
7am. We didn’t want to be running around
lost at that time in the morning. Lucky
we did. The station is having work done
to it and the front of it is completely blocked off. With no indication of how to get into
it. So we found an entrance and went
down some stairs only to find that while we were in the station, we were on the
wrong side of the tracks, literally. The
only way to cross was to go back upstairs, cross two roads and walk about 100m,
cross an overbridge, and then go back down some stairs. Once inside, we found some people that were
very helpful, but very well-hidden too.
We traded our voucher for train tickets and we had an idea of what to
expect tomorrow morning.
After that we got a great coffee at Zeitgeist and wandered
up town. One of the things that we
hadn’t done was go up the Columbia building for a view across the city. While we had been up the Space Needle, the
Columbia building is the tallest on the Seattle skyline by a reasonable
distance. Despite their best efforts to
hide the entrance to the viewing platform, we managed to find it and took the
lift to the 40th floor, and then took the other lift to the 73rd
floor (it is actually 76 storeys but the viewing platform is on 73). The views were amazing! Siobhan got a great panorama picture of the
Olympic mountains, and then a nice overview of the spaghetti roading system
that they have here. While we were there
a woman from Seattle who must work in the building wandered past and we had a
great chat about the view, the weather and everything. Some people here are very friendly. It was nice.
Having done that, we headed further uptown to see if we
could buy some small plastic bottles to put our shampoo and soap etc into so
that we could stow our rather large toilet bag in favour of a smaller,
travel-focused one. We were successful,
and so we are all sorted for our upcoming train trips. After that, we stopped on the side of the
street to look at our map to decide what to do next. Another nice woman
approached us offering to help us find where we were going. We told her that we hadn’t decided where we
were going, and so she suggested that we head down to the waterfront and see if
there was a cruise going out in the afternoon.
She said that Seattle’s weather is not always sunny like it was, and
that there wouldn’t be a better day for a cruise.
We followed her advice and were just in time for an
afternoon cruise with Argosy tours. This
was a great tour – better than the one we took in San Francisco. The crew on the boat were all there to try
and make the experience for the passengers as positive as possible. One guy gave us a running commentary for the
whole hour we were out. Another manned
the bar so that I could do a mini-tour of some of Seattle’s micro-breweries
while the boat did a tour of Elliott Bay.
The water was as smooth as glass and the commentary was very
informative. The spectacular views of
the surrounding mountain ranges and the cityscapes were difficult to capture in
a picture.
Following the cruise, we hiked back up the hill to 6th
street to the Taphouse. It had 160 beers
on tap. I only managed to try 2.5% of
their range and there were a couple of good ones in what I tried. We then caught the train back to Kent station
and walked the couple of miles back to our hotel. The lure of food was too much and so we
returned to Mitzy’s for dinner. Siobhan
had the pot roast (we are missing roast dinners), and while I should have had
the same, I had the liver instead. It
was nice, but there was too much of it and everything was dripping in
butter. I’ve felt better than I did
after that.
The final act of the day was to repack everything as we had
to take all of our stuff to the Kent station in the morning and then onto the
Amtrac to Canada. It will be an early
start as we have to be at the Kent station for a 6.34am train.
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