A Passage to Seattle… :(

A couple of attentive readers (perhaps a few from Seattle) have reminded me that I had not yet published any posts from our trip last September (!) to Seattle. Yipes! And I didn’t take notes. So while I have the photos, the write-ups may be a bit brief… So I pick up our Fall trip as we woke early one morning, luggage at the ready, and jumped into a cab to head to the train station in Vancouver…

We had originally hoped to drive down the coast from Vancouver to Seattle, but the prohibitive prices of one way car rentals meant we opted for the train instead. After clearing customs and checking our bags, we got onto the train and took our reserved seats on the preferred side of the train (facing the water on the trip down South). It was a cloudy day, the train went at a snail’s pace, and frankly, it was a poor choice, in our opinion. We should have paid the substantial difference to drive down and stop at various farms and tourist spots along the way.

While there were a few bucolic scenes along the way, most of the trip was a big ho-hum. :(

A quick photo of a lumber mill, with a lot of pine brought to the mill floated on the rivers or nearby bays.

And after clearing customs at the U.S./Canadian border — we were the only people on our car asked to take our passports out — that’s the strength of the Philippine passport — we finally snaked into this wonderful old station in Seattle. We knew from our city maps that we were near the “International District” and there were several foodie destinations in the immediate area. So instead of heading to our hotel, we checked our baggage at the train station, and decided to walk to a few nearby sites… first up, lunch at Mario Batali’s dad’s sandwich place…