On the Other Side of the Rockies

We arrived in Seattle in good time. Our ride to Midway, from Midway and through Seattle went easily and as planned. The long flight was bearable due to an in flight movie on our dvd player. So we are in Seattle. It's raining. Well, it rained all afternoon and has now stopped but is cloud covered. At least I expected the rain, and I don't mind. Rain is a great test for cities. If a city can look good in the rain, then you know it's a good place to be. It's easy to look good in the bright sunshine.

Our B&B is amazing. We had a stroke of luck and were upgraded to the suite. We reserved just one room (with a shared bathroom) but the large suite was available and we were the lucky winners of the upgrade. This suite is amazing. Seriously - fire place. jacuzzi tub, skylines and a view. I could get used to this. The owners are super nice and the place is stunning. I would highly recommend a stay at the Sleeping Bulldog B&B (http://www.sleepingbulldog.com/).

We enjoyed a Vietnamese deli lunch in the International District and amazing sushi dinner in the Fremont District, on the north side of the city. The fish is so much better here. I know - duh but it really is incredible.

Now to enjoy the Washington wine we picked up at a great local wine shop near the B&B. Priorities!

Flight to Seattle

9 AM.

We’re waiting at the Southwest gate in Midway for our flight to Seattle. We have a 9:40 AM flight out and we got through security fine considering that yesterday some people tried to send packages of explosives via cargo air to the U.S. There is a 50-something woman in front of me wearing skin-tight jeans and holding a Louis Vuitton mini dog carrying case and Roseann just pointed out that there is a woman talking to the gate people wearing a two-tone purple and fuschia ill-fitting jump suit. I swear it’s like fashion inspired by Paris Hilton circa 2005 and Will Smith circa 1988. Just don’t cross the streams.

We checked in 4 bags (including one Big Bertha bag which has a bunch of clothing as well as snorkeling gear – for those wondering, we are not planning on exploring the November top-water ecosystem of Puget Sound, this is for Maui and Kauai). We are also dragging on two carry-ons each. We will be going through 2 radically different climates and we are thankful that our initial flight is on Southwest since they don’t charge for extra bags. When we fly to Hawaii in a week we will have less bags since the plan is to get rid of all of our winter gear before we leave Seattle, UPS’ing unneeded luggage back to Chicago.

Our limo - not in picture, us holding Starbucks

We took a limo to the airport because of all the bags. Our baggage at the time included two Starbucks containers, since Midway does not have a Starbucks and we desperately needed our fix early in the morning (for those wondering if we chose Starbucks because they open very early, the answer in ‘no’ – we chose Starbucks because it’s damn good coffee. Discuss amongst yourselves).

Roseann keeps saying "Devil’s Child" as she points out the screaming children waiting to board. For those who can name the movie reference, you get 2 bonus points. Strangely enough, "Devil’s Child" is also one of the nicknames for our cat Paprika, who is currently at home tying up the little white gray cat and picking out some torture implements to play with. We dropped off our cats that need medicine to our friends Jean and Joe and to my brother Michael and his wife Chris.

Roseann's optimized checklist for departure

So, in short, we're packed, carted off to the airport and are waiting for the flight to start boarding. I was going to make a har-har joke above about wondering if they have Starbucks in Seattle, but I’ll save punch-drunk jokes for later in the trip. Hopefully later today, Roseann and I will be having a cuppa in Pike Place market and discussing the lovely and tasteful decoration of our B&B. Now, I’m just going to check my carry-on bag for cold medicine (I’m trying to be proactive with the woman next to me coughing up a lung, and no, it’s not Rosseann) and then board the flight.

Banksy

Yesterday was a trip downtown to TJ Maxx for hiking socks, both thick for the Pacific Northwest and thin for Maui and Kauai, while breaking in the new hiking boots with a nice walk through the entire downtown, including a stop at Macy's (Noodles by Takashi on the 7th floor, i.e., Ramen!).  My boots are a nice pair of size 12 waterproof Keen's, not so big that the heel of my foot will slip while heading uphill and not so tight that my big toe will stub the tip of the boot when I walk downhill (thank-you sales people at REI) - I think after all of this I will just try to hang out barefoot at the beach.

Roseann had an architecture tour to give, but before I dropped her off and headed home on the El we stopped by a rarity in Chicago, an actually cool gift shop.  I was not planning on getting anything, but then I spied a book called Banksy: Wall and Piece and started flipping through it.  It is an incredible coffee table picture book showing the works of a Bristol-born graffiti artist and includes shots similar to this:



Remember 'The Untouchables'?

We found this in the Fulton Market district



 

Banksy created this graffiti when he was in Chicago promoting a faux documentary ('Exit through the Gift Shop') that he had directed.  Unfortunately, he did not make it to Seattle or Vancouver and I'm not sure we will find much of a local graffiti culture in Kauai (coconuts smashed decoratively against the wall near the employee parking in the Princeville resort?). Maybe we can make our own graffiti:

My side of the story

So David told you about his efforts for the trip (mostly working lots of hours to help pay for it). My efforts have more concentrated on list-making, researching-reviewing-streetviewing-checking bedbug finder-reviewing reviews again and finally finding the best prices for the hotels, B&B and condos we will be staying in. Then there's the car rentals - priceline failed me for Hawaii, so we went all local to reserve the car there. Damn cars are expensive to rent out west.

So now that I am out of things I need to buy (we finally bought the last item today - a waterproof digital camera), it's time to review that pack list and get packing. Of course, I'll pack, unpack and repack. Less clothes, more cash. Cash doesn't take up much space.

What's Left

We are leaving in two weeks for Seattle.  Roseann is sitting next to me suggesting at the end of the trip we ship our luggage back, since the baggage costs for the airline flights have gotten so exorbitant and honestly with all we are bringing on this trip it seems to make sense.  We are going to Seattle, then Vancouver, with a stop at Olympic National Park for some hiking before we fly out to Maui and then Kauai for two weeks of surf and sun and more hiking and open door helicopter rides and somewhere in there a wedding on the beach (ours, in case one of our three readers hadn't heard).

Today we got hiking socks and I got some more "performance" underwear (cuz my drawers were just not living up to expectations).  We are pretty much set for the hiking gear.  We will also have some biking gear, lightweight clothes for hawaii, swimming trunks, jeans, numerous shoes, dinnerwear, a little mini computer and a lot of other stuff I cannot recall at the moment.

We have prebooked all of our hotels in addition to our flights (chicago to seattle, seattle to maui, maui to kauai, kauai to maui, maui to seattle, seattle to chicago).  We still need to get the car rentals done.  We have tickets for a show in Vancouver (Josh Ritter!) and I picked up some late night tickets for "Evil Dead: The Musical" showing in West Seattle (according to "The Rough Guide to Seattle", this is a boring ass neighborhood and according to wikipedia this is the original Seattle before the settlers all decided that the land on the other side of Elliot Bay looked more fun).

Seattle will be a tour of neighborhoods, hanging out in Pioneer Square, Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, International District, etc.  Vancouver may be similar, but I really need to look at those books soon.  All I know is that the food in Vancouver is good and the Asians are plentiful (Ramen!).

I am getting some contacts next week so I can be all fitted out for goggles when we go snorkeling and get all wrinkly skinned in Hawaii.  I need to make a list of everything to pack soon and we need to finish up with packing up the cats (a few holes in the wood crates and a can or two of food and I'm sure they'll be fine for the three weeks we're gone.

That's it for now, we're mostly ready, just gonna work a bunch of overtime leading up to our departure and bite my nails to the nubs as our departure gets closer.