Day trip to Seattle

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A friend of mine had her birthday last Wednesday and to celebrate, she wanted to go to Seattle for the day. I headed from Whistler to meet her in Vancouver the night before and on Wednesday morning we headed over to Pacific Central in Vancouver to catch the BOLTBus down to Seattle. The journey takes around three and a half hours (including time spent in Immigration) and for $20 return, it's a pretty cheap deal.

The journey itself was pretty uneventful - only the experience in Customs and Immigration seems worth mentioning. Before getting on the bus and departing from Vancouver, we needed to fill out the standard declarations forms for entering into the USA to speed up the whole process for everyone passing through Customs. We got off the bus and queued up inside, waiting for a member of staff to process us. The guy checking everyones passports pulled myself, my friend and a couple of other people out of the line and told us to wait in a corner by his desk. At this point, we had no idea what it was that set us apart from the other people passing easily through the immigration. Turns out, our little group was the group of people not holding a Canadian or American passport. I had heard stories of the USA Immigration staff being not so friendly but I wasn't prepared for the rudeness of the guy who checked our documents. His tone of voice was far too loud for 7:30am and his manner of calling us forward was just rude. "YO, ENGLAND, YOU'RE UP" doesn't seem like the professional way to ask us to step forward. After checking our passports, fingerprinting and photoraphing us, we had our passports tossed back to us across the desk and the call of "JAPAN, YOU'RE UP" indicated we could make our way to the exit and get back on the bus. The rest of the journey passed fairly peacefully and we arrived at the bus station as expected at 10am.

Our first thoughts on disembarking the bus were where are we and where can we get a map? We ended up walking down 2nd Avenue and hoping it would lead us in the general direction of the city. We hadn't really planned how we'd spend the day - we had a few things we wanted to do but other than that, we were open to all possibilites. The weather was overcast and grey, but dry - we were happy it wasn't raining. The temperature was cooler than Vancouver, almost as cold as the temperatures I'd experienced in Whistler earlier in the week. As we made our way down 2nd Avenue and then along 1st Avenue, little things caught my attention. Graffitti on the sides of buildings, an American traffic wardens vehicle, toffee apples with a ridiculous amount of embellishment etc. We ended up wondering in to the Public Market over in Pike Place. The contrast from the cold, grey streets outside the market, from the warm, colourful stands inside the market was immense. Light and colour was everywhere! Our first stop in the market was a fruit and veg stall that was also selling hot apple cider. We got chatting to the vendor and after finding out it was my friends birthday, he gave us some cider to celebrate. We continued through the market, looking at stalls selling everything from fruit and veg, fresh fish, chocolate flavoured pasta, juicy chocolate cherries, handmade leather notes books etc. Many of the vendors wanted to talk to us because our accents seemed so strange to them (my friend comes from Newcastle). We spent a long time rummaging around in an old bookstore, looking at photographs and postcards from long ago.

Our hunger finally got the better of us and we wondered into Post Alley and got some fresh Chowder in a sourdough bowl. Fresh, deliciously hot and filling. Best meal of the day! We sat a little longer to write some postcards and then got so warm and cosy, we stayed a little longer to "people watch". We continued along the street and took the obligatory photos outsde the original Starbucks coffee shop. A guy working in one of the bookstores recommented that we go to a little Russian bakery called Piroshky, Piroshky to try the apple-cinnamon rolls. We decided to follow his advice and we were no let down. Really cute little bakery, lots of tasty looking baked goods inside. We continued up the street in search of a wool store as I was really begininng to miss being able to make cosy scarves and socks. We finally located So Much Yarn at the end of the street and went in. It was warm and cosy after being outside in the dull, grey (and now wet) streets of Seattle. I picked out some chunky wool and needles for a scarf I wanted to make and reluctantly left the store without buying the whole contents of it.

From here, we decided to make our way over to the Space Needle on Broad Street. We paid the $19 entry fee and made our way up the top in forty seconds, using the glass lift. Although it was raining, the view from the top of the needle was great. You could see the whole of Seattle and out to the harbour too. We walked around the inside, learning all the facts about how it was constructed, how long it took to build etc before heading back down. We took the Monorail the short distance back into the main part of the city and wondered back into the Market to check out one final bookstore. We'd finally worked up a small enough appetite to head to the Hard Rock Cafe for some drinks and nachos before getting back on the BOLTbus to go home. The journey back up to Vancouver was fairly uneventful. I alternated my time between reading my book and making a start on my scarf. Our experience of Customs and Immigration on the way back in to Canada was so different to when we had left it. The customs officer was really friendly and asked how our day was - he even wished my friend a happy birthday! We were back on the bus in under 10 minutes and back in Vancouver in just over an hour. It was time to head to bed before catching the bus back up to Whistler the following morning and going back to work.

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Comments

[Stephanie and Andras]

Nice blog!
I used to work in Seattle's Pike Place Market and I must say - you hit the best spots! Pike Place Chowder and Piroshky Prisoshky were easily my two favorite places to eat for lunch. So glad you found the market vendors to be a warm and friendly change of pace :) Happy travels.