Vancouver to Seattle – May 11, 2015

The alarm sounded early at 5:30 AM this morning even though we had try to go to bed a little earlier last night.  We got ready and completed our final packing, and were down on the lobby of the hotel checking out at about 6:20 AM.  We had about a half mile walk tot he Quick Shuttle stop near the Holiday Inn, Downtown Vancouver.  There were quite a few people out on the streets that early, and it was fairly well lit by the early morning sun, albeit cloudy.

The walk was uneventful, but there was no bus at the stop when we arrived at about 6:40 AM.  We were a little concerned we might be in the wrong place, even though we had verified the location, and were relieved when the the bus showed up about 5 minutes later.

The bus driver checked us in, and scanned our passports since we would be crossing from Canada into the USA during the ride to Seattle.

Several other passengers showed up, and the bus left promptly at 7:00 AM, even though we were one passenger short.  The bus driver was nice, we had a good conversation with him for about the first 45 minutes.

We made two other stops to pickup passengers, one at a casino resort, and the other only a few miles from the border.  It was a strange stop, it was actually at a small convenience store/trading post, but several passengers got on.  We think they were heading to a stop at the Seattle Airport. which was after we would depart first in Downtown Seattle.

The US Customs stop went very smoothly.  there was only one bus ahead of us, and it was not full, and most if its passengers had already completed their customs processing.  We had to get out bags and all belongings from the bus, and carry them inside the Customs inspection processing building.  We went through Immigration, handed over our customs form, and then took our bags to be x-rayed.  When all of that was completed, we all took our luggage back out to the bus, loaded it into the storage compartment under the bus, and boarded the bus again.  there were only 21 of us to go through customs, and for some reason, one passenger was held at the checkpoint.  We added three additional passengers who had been held from a previous bus, possibly a Greyhound bus that had arrived before us, but still going to Seattle.  Apparently our Quick Shuttle Bus works with Greyhound to handle passengers who are held over for processing.

After getting back on board our bus, we had about 85 miles more to drive into Downtown Seattle.  It was a cloudy day for most of the drive, with some periods of rain, so the scenery was not anything special to see.

The bus dropped us off at the Convention Center in Downtown, Seattle, which was only about a four block walk to our hotel, the Hotel Motif.  We arrived at the hotel about 11:00 AM, and our room was ready, so we checked in.  We have a nice room with views of the harbor.  We could see the Pike Street Public Market Center from our room, so after settling in, we headed out to walk the few blocks to the market.

The market was crowded, and very interesting.  It is mostly known for the fish markets, especially the Pike Street Fish Market, where they throw fish around from worker to worker as sort of a show.  In addition the the several fish markets, there were quite a few fresh vegetable and fruit markets, and a lot of independent venders set up selling their wares, mostly arts and other crafts.  The City Market is several levels, and took a while for us to walk through and see everything.

There were also a lot of food vendors, so we stopped in one of them, which was a deli store that made fresh sandwiches, salads, and soups.  We had some soup and a couple of great sandwiches for lunch.

From the market, we headed down, literally, to the waterfront area.  There were several flights of stairs to get down to the harbor level.  There was some construction going on so we had to detour around that but finally got out to the pier buildings.  There is a large Ferris Wheel with enclosed gondolas out on one pier, along with some shops and restaurants.  On another is the Seattle Aquarium.

We walked out and took some pictures of the Ferris Wheel and out onto the harbor.  We do have to say that there are a lot of homeless people in this part of Seattle, especially in the areas where the stairways are to get from the City Market to the Waterfront.  We also saw a lot just in the area around the City Market, and also on the walk from the hotel.

It may be partially due to the  cloudy weather, but Seattle does not appear to be nearly as clean as Vancouver, nor as pretty in the Downtown Core.  After we finished walking along the Waterfront Area, we headed back up the stairs to the City Market to complete waling through one section we had not yet visited.

From there, we stopped at a large City Store, the same as a Target on the East Coast.  They had a grocery area, so we purchased some snacks and refreshments for the room.  They did not have anything fresh, so we then stopped an an IGA market on the way back to the room and purchased some fresh baked goods for breakfast tomorrow.

We took our supplies back to the room and rested a bit, using the wi-fi in the room to try and figure out some other sights to see today.

We decided that we would walk to the Westlake Station, a station for the underground light rail, and for buses, located underneath a Mall.  This will be the station we will use to take the light rail to the Seattle Airport on Wednesday evening, so we wanted to scout it out and make sure we knew where to go, and how the system worked.  We went ahead and purchased a couple of automated fare cards, called Orca Cards, which utilize the electronic pay system on all of the transportation systems, light rail, buses, monorail, and some ferries.

The cards cost $5.00 each to purchase, and we loaded them with $10.00 in prepaid fares.  You can reload them in any station or online if we need additional fares credits.  We man not use all of the fare credits, but this keeps us from having to have exact change to use the buses or from having to use the ticket machines for single rides.  Seattle does not have prepaid daily passes for visitors, at least none we could find looking at their metro system website.

We used our Orca Cards to ride the underground light rail to the Pioneer Square Station, two stops away, to go to the Columbia Center Sky View Observatory. The underground station is different than any others we have ever seen, it is a combination of light rail and also an underground bus station, running on the same “roadway” in the station.  Sometimes there are buses pulling up for passengers, and then the light rail will come through in the same area, using the tracks in the road instead of the roadway itself.  The buses then go one direction, still in tunnels, and the light rail goes another way in a different dedicated light rail tunnel that splits off.  We scanned our cards in the automated machine when we entered the station, and when you get off, you scan again so it knows how far you went and how much to charge in fare.  We did not know there were buses coming into the station as well as the light rail, and since we had scanned our cards before we went down to the passenger pick up area, we had to ride the light rail.  In the end, the fare is the same, or close to the same, but you scan the card on the bus, and it charges a flat rate, not a rate dependent on length of travel like the light rail.  We were glad we were spending some time now to figure this all out, and not when we were trying to get to the airport on Wednesday.

When we got off the light rail at the Pioneer station, we were a little surprised that it was partly sunny outside.  we had been in the underground station a light rail for about 40 minutes, purchasing our tickets, trying to figure our route, and the ride itself.

The Columbia Center is the tallest building in Seattle, and the second tallest on the West Coast at 902 feet tall.  We had to walk a couple of blocks from the Pioneer Station to the building.  We went inside and purchased our tickets from an automated system.

We then had to take two elevators to get to the top, the first was an express to the 40th floor, then the next one went from the 40th floor to the upper floors.  The observatory is on floor 73 out of 76 total floors, the top floors are reserved for a private club.

Since it was only partly cloudy, we were able to see a lot of the surrounding areas of Seattle from the observatory.  However, there were still a lot of clouds in the distant mountains, so we could not see Mt. Rainer, which is visible on a clear day.  We had chosen to do this today because the weather is forecast to be even cloudier tomorrow.  We stayed in the observatory for about 40 minutes, and then walked back to the area around our hotel, scouting out some potential restaurants for dinner.

We headed back to the room, and also looked online for some restaurant reviews and suggestions using Travel Adviser and some other online systems.  We had seen one Italian restaurant and another called the Tap Room.  We could not remember the name of the Italian restaurant, and were not able to look at reviews, so we opted to go to the Tap Room tonight.

Since they were close together, we walked to the Italian restaurant first to get the name so we could look it up later.

Our dinner was really good, although we were seated near a large party of 16 young business associates celebrating some special event, and they were a little loud until their food was served.  It also tied up our poor waiter, and we had some issues getting service, but he was very apologetic, and the restaurant finally got him some help.  We split two flatbreads, and some hot wings, and had a couple of local brewed beers.  They serve over 160 beers on tap, hence the name, the Tap Room.

After dinner, we walked back down to the Public Market Center for some photos of their neon sign at night.  The market closes around 6:00 PM, so there was not anything going on there other than a couple of restaurants serving dinner.  We had though about getting some seafood, but the two main items served fresh here are Dungeness Crabs and Salmon, neither of which we are that fond of.  Prices for other seafood we like, such as shrimp or scallops were quite high, and we can get them elsewhere.

We returned to the room about 9:00 PM, and settled in to relax.