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Published: August 11th 2012
It is Day 22 and we arrived in Seattle this morning. We chose to leave the ship with last group group so we would have time for a leisurely breakfast and last minute packing. What beautiful weather, sun and relatively warm, not 114 like AZ today so we will enjoy our Seattle day before heading out tomorrow morning for home.
Last night, we said our goodbyes to our favorite musicians on board ( the Hungarian viloinist as our favorite and we bought his CD to enjoy at home), and to some of the singers Bob performed with in the talent show.The talent show was on the big performance stage and we actually have a video of the performance. We had our final dinner at the Canaletto restaurant (see picture) with excellent Italian cuisine and finished our last bottle of champagne. View of the Amsterdam, and the habour at sunset finished off last night.
We are ensconced in our room at the Marriott Courtyard Pioneer Square with great internet. We were able to leave the ship at 9am, clear customs, got a porter for the bags and were at the hotel by 10! Amazingly they had a room we could
check in to right away. Susan just finished repacking the bags (checked them on the scale and they are under 50 pounds).
OK, we hit the Pike Place Market at lunch hour. What a zoo. Very lively and such a pretty day. Beautiful flower bouquets for $5. We need one of these in Surprise. Our lunch table is overlooking the ferris wheel from the upper level of the Athenian restaurant where a scene from Sleepless in Seattle was filmed. See pictures. Saw the fish market where they throw fish, but today they weren't throwing any for my camera. Also saw the famous pig bank-raises money for charity.
To wrap up our afternoon, Starbucks provided us internet access and Susan's special coffee drink as well as a cast of characters. Yes Patti and Paul, we did see beggars - the scam artists, snake charmers, musicians, tourists, and obviously rich or unemployed for who else, and they should have been too young to be retired, would be hanging out at Starbucks in the middle of the afternoon?
As we near the end of our trip, fly home tomorrow to Surprise, AZ and leave behind Seattle's forecast of 79 degrees
and sunny, for 113 and sunny, we'll probably soon have fond memories of Alaska's 54 degrees, wind and rain! Unless there is a profound event worthy of blogging tomorrow-all we are doing is to flying home, so this Blog today will close our trip.
To Patti and Paul, our Seattle friends who laid out our first week trip with must sees including spending 3 days with them before departing on the cruise, and to Kathryn and Chuck, our Juneau friends who gave us the Grand Juneau tour during our stop, and to all our loyal readers who bore with us for the past three weeks reading and commenting, we thank you all. Patti told me about www.travelblog.org, it's free and relatively easy to use once you get the hang of it. I encourage you all to start trip blogging and include us as subscibers!
We are compiling our Cruise Tips and Tricks list for the future and we'll be glad to share those for anyone interested. We already have over 20. And a special thank you to Art and Enid Stecker (Susan's big brother and our sister-in-law) whose encouragement led us to Holland America, Kelly the travel agent,
and their tips and tricks (all of which were true) to make this trip possible. (NOTE: we will be having a 90/10 raffle to help pay for it! Let us know if you'd like to participate-just kidding!)
We did miss our Maizianne during the trip but had her picture to keep us company. Fortunately we still were in the US (except for a stop in Victoria), and Alasks as a state is a beautiful one at that and internet access, and especially cell phone access was readily available in all the ports, even the most remote. We were able to keep in touch with our children/grandchildren by phone and blog of course. Seattle even has Sprint 4G (why not Phoenix I ask?).
We have definitely decided that future cruises are in the offing for us as a travel mode and look forward to sharing our full set of pictures and experiences this fall when everyone returns to Arizona (over a glass of wine of course).
So, when we walk in the door to the house tomorrow, the last picture is probably what we will confront, Maizianne saying, oh your home? (ho humm)!
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Patti Chambers
non-member comment
Welcome home Bob and Susan
We so enjoyed your blogs. Glad you had such a great time and that you were able to enjoy Seattle. Talk to you soon, Patti and Paul