Almost sleepless in Seattle….

Wednesday 29 May

….we had so little time here, only 18 hours, so we needed to make the most of it.  We arrived around 4.30pm on a pretty decent Alaskan Airways flight and took the train into the city – a great idea given it was almost rush-hour by the time we got our bags and it cost us the huge sum of $3.00 each and took us within walking distance of our hotel in downtown Seattle in a very short time!  No time to waste, we dumped our bags and had a bit of a walk around and met up with Jo and Earl who had booked a hotel not too far from us.  We had been given a recommendation to try the Chinook’s Restaurant, so we hopped into an Uber and headed down to Chinook’s at Salmon Bay which is located at Fisherman’s Terminal and has been the base of the North Pacific fishing fleet since 1913 with over 700 commercial fishing vessels calling it home.  This is the fishing terminal where people make money at sea, some of whom never come back because of a disaster or storms.  The Deadliest Catch TV Showboats that roam the Bering Straits are also based here!  We had a very convivial last dinner with Jo and Earl as we are all heading off in different directions tomorrow – they are leaving to join family in Mexico, and we are off to the San Juan Islands on yet another adventure.

Thursday 30 May

We were up early today so we could get a quick walk around the city in before we departed on our bus to Anacortes.  It was lovely to open the curtains and be welcomed by sunshine and we headed off and walked down to Pike Market Centre where the stalls were just being set up for the day.  The Pike Place Market has been a defining Seattle icon for more than a century and is one of the oldest and large continuously operating public markets in the US.  Although we were there just past 7.00am there were already lots of fresh fish and flower stalls being set up for the day and plenty of other stallholders preparing for a full day’s trading.  There is a lot of building and landscaping work being done down in the dock area (like being back in Auckland!) so a lot of the shoreline was out of bounds, but looking at what had been achieved so far it appeared it would all be ready for summer and a terrific job is been done of it too.  We had a great wander around, coffees in hand (after all, this is the home of Starbucks) and thoroughly enjoyed the chance to have a look at a bit of the Seattle waterfront before we leave.

I was of course very dismayed to come across the Purple Store – too early in the morning…..pleeeaassseee let me in!!!!!

Back to the hotel to collect our bags, and we were off – we have two buses and a ferry to negotiate today, before we arrive at our next destination – Friday Harbour!