In the immortal words of Jim Morrison ...

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Geo: 47.6353, -122.302

... this is the end.

The hotel worked out pretty well. We didn't hear a bit of noise during the night, and we were able to go down an elevator and an escalator to get breakfast at Starbucks. We checked out around 10:00 and then walked over to the airport to check in for our Lufthansa flight.

Frankfurt airport doesn't have half the duty-free shops that Heathrow does, so I wasn't tempted to buy a bunch of last-minute stuff. Probably a good thing. We had to take a bus from the gate to our plane, which was a full flight. Lufthansa's pretty good. They see that we're well-hydrated and fed, and they also hand out hot towels two times during the flight. The flight crew were pleasant too.

I'd never been on a plane where the restrooms were down a small staircase. I liked it that way because then there weren't a million people crowding the aisles.

The flight was uneventful. I watched "Brave," and John watched “Men in Black III.” We landed in Vancouver on time but we had less than two hours to get to our Air Canada/Jazz flight. We had to enter Canada, which meant standing in a long line in a hot arrivals hall to show our passports. Then we had to retrieve our bags (which Frankfurt had been able to tag through to Seattle) and hand over our Canadian Customs Declaration. By the time we found the check-in counter for our flight, we had about one minute to go till we would have been considered late. As it was, the agent had to ask a supervisor to open the flight so that our bags would get on. And then we had to show our passports again and go through U.S. Customs and security. It's nice that you can clear U.S. Customs in Canada because that treats your flight as a domestic flight, so when you land in the U.S. you can just deplane and claim your bag and be on your way. On the other hand, it's a pain to have to do all that in Canada if you're in a hurry to catch an onward flight.

The Air Canada/Jazz plane had 12 rows and propellers, and when we took off it sounded like someone had attached wings to a Volkswagen Beetle. At least it was a short flight and the scenery was nice.

So we got our bags at SeaTac and then got the light rail into town, then hopped a bus to Lake City, where we waited for 20 minutes for another bus to take us closer to home. In that time, we could have walked, but we were both so tired and the last thing I wanted to do was parade down Lake City Way with my suitcase.

Anyway, it's good to be home. The only thing missing is Chloe, and we won't be able to pick her up till Monday.

So that's the end. We had a great time and experienced some things we would likely never get to try here in Seattle. Of course, I hope we get to keep traveling, but I'll be perfectly happy not having to be anywhere near an airplane in the near future.

Auf wiedersehen!

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Comments

[Yvonne]

I hope you get to travel again too because I want to travel with you again. Here's to future Rick Steve's Tours for both of us!!!