Revisiting Vancouver, Not

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Our original plans had to spend a few days visiting and doing touristy things in Vancouver for a few days before we boarded this cruise. At least, that ‘was’ the plan. We had to scrap those when we discovered that we had to spend those days in Las Vegas picking out options for the new home being built for us. Our return to Vancouver wasn’t going to afford us time to sightsee either. After a quick bite to eat in the Lido, we took our carry-ons to the gangway and had an extremely easy disembarkation. About twenty of the crew and staff including Jeremy were on hand to say good-bye to us. Our bags were right where they were supposed to be, and we made our way to the bus taking us to Seattle (airport). We had to wait for those disembarking from a Princess ship. Our driver was a man of few words, unlike the trip up, where our driver was very informative and it was just like being on one of Holland Americas tours. And the rest stop was just that, and the promised vending machines were a figment of our driver’s imagination.

We arrived at SEATAC without incident and made our way to the ground transportation spot to hail a taxi. Our driver was the stereotypical Middle Eastern cabbie. As it turns out a marathon today has closed the main street we should have taken and the twenty minute trip took almost an hour. When the cabbie pulled into our motel I caught a glimpse of the premises out of the corner of my eye, and my first thought was, “This can’t be right. Sharon would never have booked us into… here.” But she did! All of the places that she’d tried to book had no vacancies; or, were running over $300 per night.



We were hungry, but the pickings weren’t quite what we might have hoped, and we wound up at a Taco Bell. I’m sure her siblings would have loved to see her walk into a Mexican fast food joint. The cashier was very helpful, and offered to make whatever Sharon wanted the way she wanted it. She ended up ordering a grilled chicken bowl (hold the tomatoes, hold the onions, hold the salsa, hold the cheese,… you get the idea). She picked through the lettuce, didn’t try the beans or rice that came with it, and wasn’t able to find much chicken that she would eat; but, she tried. When we returned to the motel she did a search for any local mini-marts and found one about one-third of a mile away. So we hoofed it there and got some basics (peanut butter Ritz crackers and candy), and stopped at the Jack-In-The-Box and grabbed a burger as well. So we made it through that first night. We had another night to spend in that motel as we planned a day of touring in Seattle before boarding the Staatendam on Monday.

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