Places You'll Go: Let's Head to Seattle!

I tried to do you guys a service and surfed the internet for the last half hour or so looking for a place where it isn't raining currently or expected to rain today to talk about and I have not located a single tropical location on the globe that I can speak semi-intelligently about that will be dry today. Maybe the Mayans were just a few weeks off in their prediction and we are all going to float away. Or maybe we just need to start getting our measurements for arks in order.

At any rate, since I didn't find a likely tropical location to tell you about today, you are stuck with more photos from past vacations of mine. But in keeping with the weather, I'm telling you today about Seattle. Don't start with me.... I know that I told you just a few days ago about how it only sprinkled once the entire time we were in Seattle a few years ago, but nevertheless, when I think rain, I think Seattle. So, Seattle is what you get today. Looking back through this blog, I don't think I have given you details previously of the Seattle trip my friend Jenny and I took in May of 2009. I hope not anyway. If you have read this before then please just disregard this post and come back tomorrow for something that you hopefully haven't read previously.

The trip to Seattle was never intended to be a beach type trip. Obviously the Pacific Northwest isn't where you go to lie on a beach. But I don't think I ever expected that we would work as hard as we did on that particular vacation either. Before I even get into this, I feel that there are a couple of things I should tell you.... first of all, Jenny and I are both straight, but for some reason when two women travel together in Seattle I guess it is assumed that they aren't... "not that there's anything wrong with that...." Second, although I think I usually have it all together, this was the trip when I found out that at times, I can be a total scatter brain! But I'll get into that later. Finally, I was really surprised at the homeless problem in Seattle. It was quite eye opening.

The trip started out with a fairly early arrival at our hotel. We were staying at the Arctic Club Hotel which is a Doubletree property. It was probably one of the nicest hotels I have ever stayed at and the beds were the softest I have ever slept in. But anyway, we arrived at the hotel kind of early and our room wasn't ready yet. So we decided to walk down to Pioneer Square which was only a few blocks away. We went there and communed with the homeless people of Seattle for a little while before joining the Underground Tour which takes you under the present day sidewalks. The thing is, they didn't dig tunnels to create the underground. Back in the day that part of the city was just a lot lower and due to flooding and sewage issues that I won't go into, they basically built retaining walls and filled in parts then built a new city on top of those streets to alleviate their issues. It's a cool tour. So after our tour, we walked back to the hotel which was only a few blocks up the street, and when I say up, I mean UP.

If you haven't been there, Seattle is a lot like San Francisco. The parts of the city closest to the sound are the lowest points and you have to go uphill to get away from the water. Of course since the lower part of the city is now at least 8 feet higher due to part of the city being filled in, the hills aren't as bad as they apparently once were. So, when we got back to the hotel a little tired from our walk, we were taken up to our room by the very friendly bellhop who I don't think we ever convinced that we were not a gay couple. As we walked in, the first thing each of us noticed was a single king sized bed. When we made our reservation we had specifically requested two double beds. We told the bellhop this and we all went back downstairs to the front desk. After a few minutes we were taken upstairs again to the most wonderful double queen room ever! The picture below is from their website but it is about what our room looked like....

The picture really doesn't do it justice since you can't see around the corner. But I'll just tell you that it was a really cool room and those beds were super soft, warm and comfy. Once we were in our room and unpacked we went back out to walk to the rental car company and pick up our car for the next day. They were so helpful and allowed us to leave the car in their parking lot while we weren't using it so that we didn't have to pay the hotel parking fee. Since the rental agency was only a block from the hotel, it worked out perfectly. The only problem was that when we went to pick the car up early in the morning before they were open, the parking garage was full of homeless people sleeping which was sort of uncomfortable. I drove the car and my worst fear was running over a sleeping homeless person.

The following morning we had planned to go to Victoria, BC via the high speed ferry. It was a great trip. We were lucky enough to get seats in the front of the ferry and during the boat ride which was about an hour and a half long, we booked our excursions in Victoria that we were interested in doing for the day. We decided to go to Butchart Gardens and then have tea at the Empress Hotel.

The picture to the right was taken during the boat ride from Seattle to Victoria. Once we arrived in Victoria, we had a little more than an hour to sight see before our bus left for Butchart Gardens. So we visited the Parliament building which is directly across from the port. Below is a photo of the outside of the building. By the way, there are totum poles all over the place in the Pacific Northwest. They have a self guided tour that we took at the Parliament building. It was very interesting and pretty.

Parliament Building

To the right are a couple of pictures of the inside of the building. The self guided tour may have taken 20 or 30 minutes. After we left there we walked over to The Empress where we were to board our bus to head for Butchart Gardens. Surprise... I took a couple of pictures along the way.... :-)

I'm just going to go ahead and tell you that I was not prepared at all for what we experienced at Butchart Gardens. If you have any interest whatsoever in ever seeing a pretty flower, then you simply must go there. It is extraordinary. Even the parking lot and the sign announcing that you are there are amazing! I had done no research on the place. In fact, I am not sure I had ever even heard of it prior to boarding the ferry that morning. That was more than 3 years ago, so I could be mistaken. But I believe that the people on the ferry just suggested it as a great place to visit while we were there, so we did. Below are a few pictures of the gardens. I have to tell you that I took several hundred, so narrowing this down to 2 or 3 was really quite a feat on my part.

If you are ever in British Columbia, just take my word for it and go. If I remember correctly, it was a 20 or 30 minute bus ride from Victoria. Once we were back in Victoria, we had some time to kill before our tea at the Empress so we walked to Chinatown to take a few pictures and do just a little bit of shopping. Coming back from Chinatown the views were great, everywhere you looked there was a picture that needed to be taken. So, I did. Thank God for digital cameras.... How did we function when we had to buy film???

Tea at The Empress

Below is a picture of the high speed ferry that we went to Victoria on. From what I understand, if you are prone to being seasick these things can be kind of uncomfortable for you. But we didn't have any problems at all.

One last shot of The Empress as the ferry pulled away from Victoria

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a nut for sunsets, so I took this photo as we made our way back to Seattle. I think it was around 9 p.m. when we finally got back to the city. It was a beautiful day and we managed to cram a lot into it. But it was nothing compared to the following day which I'll tell you about tomorrow.