Cruise — Day 08 — Seattle and the End 



Pictures from this blog entry can be found here.

Well, we eased back into the slip at 7 AM and headed back to the Rotterdam dining room for our last breakfast on board. Then it was back to the room to twiddle our thumbs until they called Group Orange 4 around 10 AM for our disembarkation. Of coarse, our stateroom faced the container ship dock across the channel so picture taking opportunities were extremely limited. Finally they called us, and we cheated and took the elevator down to the gangway. The gangway snakes its way across the dock for fully a quarter mile before your foot hits the pavement down close to the terminal building doors. U.S. Customs is kind of a joke; the customs agents just kinda glance to see that you have a US Passport in your hand — mine was never opened — and wave you through. So much for secure borders, I know I will sleep better at night.

We wandered through the baggage area searching for our bags — for those of you who have not cruised this is a big open area in the terminal building with the bags lined up in rows and clustered according to the same color and number as the departure group you were called by. Drag, drag, dragging 4 wheeled suitcases across the parking lot to the taxi line. Invariably, every time we would drag our suitcases to a cab, someone else would have already stolen that. Which brings me to my big complaint on this cruise… RUDENESS! It seems like there was a lot more rudeness, whining and complaining from the passengers on this cruise. I don't know if the discount pricing on cruises is letting on a different class of people — wanting A-1 Steak Sauce for your $54 cut of filet mignon (no, they didn't have it, thankfully) points this out to me — or people have inflated expectations of what the cruise experience should be like. The crew on the other-hand was for the most part very friendly and professional; we only had one problem with a young English gal in the onboard shops who was rude to the point of surliness on the several occasions we had to deal with her. But, she got singled out on our post cruise comment cards we were working on in our cabin prior to leaving the ship.

One of the cruise personnel working on the taxi line finally got a cab for us and we were on our way downtown to the Madison (a Renaissance Marriott hotel), but you could tell our cabbie was hoping we were a $28 fare to SeaTac rather than a $10 fare to Sixth and Madison. We stayed at the Madison as a way to ease back into the "Real World" for we had grown accustomed to concierge service after our week of roughing it on the high seas. Granted, it is not as Old World opulent as the Empress Hotel in Victoria, but it is much better than the Motel 6 or Super 8 we may stay at on a road trip.

We got settled in and poured over the brochures we picked up in the lobby and picked Seattle Tours for a 3 hour tour (sit right back and you'll hear a tale...) of the city in a small motor coach with big windows. By now we were hungry and we headed down to the second floor to the in-house restaurant Maxwell's. The food was good and the portions were more than generous we thought as we waddled out to the lobby to wait for our tour. We were more than a little disappointed that the Monorail is down for repairs until sometime in July as the the south terminus is only a two minute walk down Sixth Avenue from the hotel and we could have taken it to the space needle for lunch or supper (if we could have gotten in). Oh well, next trip.

The tour was alright, the weather had cleared up so we had bright, sunny skies over the city, but Mt. Ranier was still clouded over and out of sight, and the Olympic Mountains across Puget Sound only occasionally peeked out of the mists. trying to cover 50 miles of roads in city traffic in only 3 hours makes for a trip that is very rushed at best, and usually pictures have to be taken as you drive by. We made three stops along the way; a little waterfall park that UPS built downtown, the Ballard Locks between Lake Washington and Puget Sound and at the Rose Garden at the Seattle Zoo. We also crossed the I-90 floating bridge over Lake Washington, drove by the Space Needle and through the Pike Street Public Market and took in the view from Magnolia Avenue on the North Shore with its views of downtown and its fine landscaping. Oh, and for you coffee hounds, we drove past the ORIGINAL Starbucks down by the Pike Street Market.

Yes, it was rushed, but we did get to take in a fair amount of the city and saw a lot we wouldn't have seen if we had driven around on our own. The bus driver, Steve was very knowledgeable and occasionally funny, in an often punny sort of way. Probably worth the money, but would have liked to have had about 15 minutes to have taken in the flavor of the Market.

In summary, Seattle is a a busy, but pretty town of 3.6 million people with a distinct character and charm uniquely its own. Will have to explore more when we have more time.

After our whirlwind tour, we retired to the Madison and had supper at Maxwell's, and pretty much called it a day.  

Posted: Sun - June 18, 2006 at 05:18 PM          

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