Day 3 - Page 1

Washington State Ferries

We begin day 3 early because this is the day we're going to head over to Port Angeles and eventually on to Victoria, B.C. As I would later come to realize, this would be my favorite part of our trip.

We start the morning off with breakfast at the hotel and then drive into the city to take the Bremerton Ferry to the town of Bremerton before driving on to Port Angeles. Below are a few pictures I took of us pulling out of the harbor:

Now the two pictures below I think you'll find very interesting. They show just how deceptive photography can be. And I am by no means an expert photographer.


In this first picture to the right, it looks as if the Space Needle is right next to that large black building. That building, by the way is the tallest building in Seattle, and always will be. According to our tour guide they are not allowed to build any higher because of their proximity to the airport.





Now, even though they look like they're right next to each other, in reality they are a couple miles apart, as seen in this second photo to the left. The tall black building is on the right and the Space Needle is on the left. Be sure to scroll all the way right and left so you see the whole picture. And no, I had no idea that first picture would turn out that way. Just lucky. : )

Now if you take a close look at this next picture, and look behind the bridge, you'll see a great shot of Mt. Ranier in the background looming over the city.


Now, looking forward out into the Puget Sound I snapped a bunch of photos of the Olympic Mountains out in the distance. These two pictures are just a couple of the many I took. The Olympic Mountains were the most beautiful and breathtaking part of the whole trip for me. I look forward to going back to Seattle some day just to see these mountains again. I'll be writing more about them in my next post.


Before I sign off for the evening, just a few words about the Washington State Ferry System you may find interesting. The Ferry System boasts 26 ferries that cross the Puget Sound and all the other inland waterways around Seattle from Tacoma, Washington, to Sidney, British Columbia, Canada to the San Juan Islands. The Washington Ferry System is the largest ferry fleet in the United States with over 1800 employees. You can check out the Ferries home page for fees and schedules by clicking this link. It truly is impressive.

My next post will continue day 3 with our arrival in Port Angeles and our trek up to the top of the Olympic Mountains.

Enjoy

Day 2 - Page 2

Spirit of Washington - Dinner Train

Well as it turned out, DeAnne's parents, Clarice and Gil, did not arrive at the hotel until about 4:00 pm that afternoon. That would have been fine except we had previously made a dinner reservation on the Spirit of Washington train ride. So they hardly had time to grab a quick nap and we were off to our train ride dinner.

What can I say about the Spirit of Washington? Well, it was interesting but we sat in a dome car, for which you pay a little extra and thinking we'd have a great ride and view. The only problem was that it seemed like we were seated on a wooden box with cushions. If you're more than 2' tall it is really cramped. The tables were small and I felt claustrophobic, so being the humble, short, fat, bald guy that I am I was pretty cramped when we arrived at our destination.







This picture on the left is of the whole gang just before we departed. My father-in-law, Gil on the left, my wife, DeAnne in the middle and her mother Clarice on the right.









So what was our destination? It was the Columbia Winery which was founded in 1962 by ten friends, six of whom were University of Washington professors. Below are a few pictures I took when we were there.

**To view a larger image of any of the pictures throughout this blog just click on them. Then click your browser's back button to return to the story.

The winery was right near the train tracks. This is us arriving at the winery. The train turned around while we were inside.




These are two pictures I took while inside. They show the kegs the wine is stored in for aging.







This last picture is of us at the wine tasting section. They have a very nice gift shop in the other room that my wife pointing at.






Well folks, that's all for day two. From here we took the train ride back, went back to our hotel and passed out from exhaustion.

NOTE: If you're thinking of making reservations to take the Spirit of Washington train ride, I'm sorry to inform you that as of October 29, 2007 it has ceased its operations. Sorry.

Ok, tune in tomorrow for more fun filled adventure of our trip to Seattle. Tomorrow, we take the ferry to the Olympia Mountain range and eventually on to Victoria, B.C. Canada to the famous Buchart Gardens.

Day 2 - Page 1

Pike Place Market

The next morning we awoke to the news that DeAnne's parents would not be arriving in Seattle until later that afternoon. So, seeing that we had most of the day to ourselves we decided to drive to the city and check out some things in greater detail.

After eating a hearty waffle breakfast, we headed for the city and went to the world famous Pike Place Market which is a huge farmers market/fish market as well as other shops and restaurants.

Pike's Market opened on Aug. 17, 1907 with six to 12 wagons. Today it is the nations oldest continuously operating farmers market. Pike's has an amazing assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables as well as many places to eat. We picked up some great strawberries and other things there that we brought back to munch on at our hotel. The fruit was fabulous!

We stopped in and ate lunch at one of the local restaurants there called Lowells. Lowells overlooks the Port of Seattle, the Olympic Mountains and the Waterfront. The neat thing about this restaurant is that it has 3 floors and overlooks Puget Sound. We were able to eat on the top floor with a table right next to the window. What a gorgeous view we had of the harbor and Puget Sound. Oh yea, food was great too and so was the service.

Day 1 - Page 2

Seattle Tours

Well, once we got our bags stowed away in our room, which was now about 3:00 Seattle time, we decided to take a tour of the city and just happened to pick Seattle Tours out of a brochure. And what a great find they were. Seattle Tours came all the way down to Renton and picked us up right at the door of our hotel. We were the first ones picked up and the last ones to be dropped off at the end of the day. The actual tour was 3 hours but when you factor in all the picking up of people around the city it added an additional 2 hours to our excursion.

My wife and I both highly recommend Seattle Tours. They were great and the woman who drove us all around was very friendly and knowledgeable about the area. She took us all over the city showing us places like Pikes Market, the Ballard Locks, as well as panoramic views of the city from Kerry Park, as seen from the picture on the right. She was very patient and answered all our questions and even stopped at a place for us to get ice cream. mmmmmmmmmmm! Unfortunately for us we had just gotten off the plane that day after a 5 hour flight and now we're sitting on a bus for hours so it was a very tiring day.

Although I really wasn't interested in taking a guided tour at first, I am now a firm believer in starting off a trip that way. It gave us a great opportunity to get a general layout of the city as well as information on things we might want to explore in greater depth later. As far as Seattle goes we both highly recommend Seattle Tours. If you're going to Seattle anytime soon you may also want to take a tour first. You can check out their web site here to see what they have to offer and compare them with others.

Seattle Vacation - May 2007

Hello all,

I started this blog because My wife, DeAnne and I took a vacation back in May 2007 with her parents to Seattle, Washington. We had such a great time while we were there that I thought I'd like to just share some of our fun with anyone who is interested.

Its funny, because before we left I wasn't even sure I really wanted to go. I was very busy with work and I thought, 'do I really want to fly all the way across the country just to visit another city??' After all, it's not like this was a cruise or something? Well as it turned out I ended up having the time of my life. Seattle was great and the whole Northwest region that we visited was incredibly beautiful.

So what I'd like to do in this blog is just share some pictures with you and give play by play synopsis of our trip. Kind of like a pictorial travel guide.

I hope you enjoy this and I will say this: If you ever get a chance to visit the Seattle area, take it - you won't be disappointed.

Well, I guess the best place to begin is at the beginning. We flew out of Jacksonville, Florida early on Tue, May 22. We had a very uneventful flight and arrived at SeaTac Intl. Airport around 11:00am Seattle time. My inlaws did not want to get up that early so they opted for a later flight, a decision they'd soon regret. As we were walking to baggage claim I noticed a message on my cell phone. It turned out that there was some severe weather across the plain states all the way down to Texas. So their flight was postponed until the following day. This forced them to get a hotel room in Jacksonville to wait for their flight the next day. Of course, who needs that extra expense.

My wife and I rented a car from Hertz and drove to our hotel. We actually stayed in Renton, Wa. which is a small town about 20 minutes south of Seattle. We were staying at a Marriott, TownePlace Suites hotel. It was very nice and the staff was superb. Whenever we had a need, if the folks at the desk couldn't help us, the manager was right there and even helped us get our bags to our rooms. I highly recommend the TownePlace Suites hotel in Renton. It was very clean and the staff was top notch.

Well, its late so I'll end today's post here with our arrival at our hotel. Tomorrow we'll look at what we did after we settled in.