Off we go on another rollicking adventure!

YES, it’s another cruise… big shock, I know… but this one is going to be significantly different than the other ones I’ve been writing about.

Firstly, we’re not on Viking, we’re on Holland America. We’ve sailed with them a couple times before: Maritimes, Alaska - but it’s been awhile. We liked them just fine before, but it will be interesting to see what we think of them now that we’ve been spoiled by Viking.

Secondly, it’s a handbell cruise sponsored by Bells of the Cascades, a handbell team in the Pacific Northwest. More on that later.

The preparation for going to the airport was a bit different, too. In addition to making sure we had our passports, NEXUS cards, boarding passes, etc, I also deleted every social media app off my phone and iPad. For those reading this in the future, that might sound odd, but at the time of this writing, US President Trump is acting like a dick tater (intentional misspelling) and his goons at border security have literally detained people for having messages on their mobile devices that are critical of Trump. If you’ve ever seen my social media, you know that I’m nothing if not vocal about my absolute hatred (and I don’t use that word lightly) of the orange shitgibbon currently grifting the US population while pretending to be a leader.

Anyway, at least we do the customs clearance here in Calgary rather than in Seattle - you might remember from the last trip that the Seattle customs guy was waaaaaaaaaaay too into his job and gave us the third degree even though we were only changing planes there. So we (and our NEXUS cards) got through security fairly quickly and had minimal issues at the face-to-face with the border guard.

Welcome to Seattle!

Like most places, Seattle’s airport is Way TF out of town, so the cab ride to the hotel was around $60 USD (everything from here on will be in USD, just so you know). We’re at the Hampton Inn Downtown Seattle. We like Hamptons - they’re part of Hilton and they’re clean and comfy and they have coffee available in the lobby 24/7. Our room is on the 6th floor at the corner of the building - which I chose on their app before we arrived.

The view from the window is an apartment building with a nice little pub downstairs. As soon as we got checked in, we headed over there for a bite of lunch.

We were told by the hotel front desk that they had good fish & chips. But as soon as I saw a chorizo burger on the menu, I switched to that.

Rob confirmed that the fish & chips were good and I got a quick reminder of two things when I got my chorizo burger: [1] portions in America are much, much larger than in Canada and [2] menu items that would warrant a spicy warning in Canada don’t even get a casual mention here. Unlike at home, where “spicy” means it has some flavour, “spicy” here is proper spicy.

The chorizo was spicy, the chipotle mayo was seriously spicy, the red onions were potent, and the jalapeños were bringing some serious heat. LOVED IT. I would absolutely have that again.

After lunch, we had a bit of a walkabout in our neighbourhood to see what there is to see/do tomorrow. The pub where we had lunch is dog friendly and there’s a cute sign out front.

Being Seattle, there’s a coffee shop on every corner. Canadian peeps, imagine your own neighbourhood, but make all the Tim Hortons locations into funky, mom/pop independent coffee shops instead. We stopped into this cute little hole-in-the-wall and got a couple cups to go.

When we passed our hotel again, Rob opted to head to the room and have a relax, while I decided to explore the opposite direction for a bit. The Space Needle isn’t far away and you can even see it from our hotel room if you press your face against the window and look sideways.

Not far from the hotel is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation museum. As billionaires go, Bill Gates has at least put quite a lot of his money toward helping and educating others. So good for him. As much as I dislike most things Microsoft (second only to my dislike of most things Google), I’ll give him a pass as a person who has at least done a bit of good in the world. The museum is free, so maybe I should pop across the street and see what exhibit is going on, in case I want to come back tomorrow.

Um… ok. Maybe I’ll pass on that one.

Just a block or so further down is the Museum of Pop Culture (MOPOP) which is housed in this ridiculously cool building designed by Canadian architect Frank Gehry. He’s quite the boundary-pusher, that guy. The building looks like a pile of fabric until you get closer, then it’s obviously very rigid steel.

Next to that is the Chihuly Glass Museum

The last time we were here, we almost didn’t visit this museum because the tickets were quite pricey, but I’m glad we decided to go after all. The blown glass artwork inside are staggeringly beautiful. (Photo from our last visit)

The Space Needle sits next door to the Chihuly, looking important and imposing.

And again, we did this last time we were here, so I couldn’t justify paying $50 to go back up the tower again today, even though it was perfect weather for it. Here’s what the view looks like from up there - note the MOPOP museum at the bottom of the pic (photo from our last visit)

Hey, I can see our hotel from that shot, too! On the way back to the hotel, I saw something called QFC, which looked like an office building, but it was obviously open to the public, so I stuck my head in. Wait, what?

The office building is hiding a really nice little grocery store in it, just a block from our hotel. That will come in handy, as we’re both still stuffed from lunch and we can just pick up a snack at the deli here and maybe a bottle of wine and we’re all set.

…but as it turned out, we went back to the grocery and nothing really struck our fancy there, so we headed back up the hill to “Big Mario’s”

Firstly, because look at it. How much fun is this? Secondly, because they sell pizza by the slice and we were still full from the big lunch we had, so a single slice of pizza seemed just the ticket. We ordered a couple slices of pepperoni and grabbed a couple pints of hard cider and sat out on the patio…

…but the slices were about the size of a whole small pizza, because ‘Murica.

No matter - it was pretty good pizza and I really liked the cider (being a local brand, not surprising. Washington is famous for their apples). Then back to the hotel to hop online and scope out a good crab place for lunch tomorrow. Picked one, figured out how to get there, and planned a couple other things to do along the way.

But you’ll have to read about all that tomorrow.

Back to this trip’s main page
Back to the travelogue page