Welcome to Haines!

The ship arrived pretty early in the morning (well before I got up) at our first port of call – Haines. It’s a small Alaskan town – the population is about the same as the number of people on the ship.

After breakfast we wandered off the ship for a look around – it was lightly raining (our first rain of this whole holiday so far), but not enough to worry about. We checked out a few inevitable gift shops – pleased to see they had nice stuff, not the same things we’d seen in every other gift shop we’ve passed through so far in our Alaskan travels. We visited a bookshop which had a great feature – a puppy 🙂

We also stopped off for decent coffee (yay) and a cookie almost as big as the plate it was put on. Good stuff!

Then it was time for Haines’ big attraction – The Hammer Museum. Yep, a museum about hammers. But it was (surprisingly) more interesting than it might first seem. It was a small-ish cottage, full of hammers. Big ones, little ones, automated ones, decorative ones – so now I know there’s definitely more than one way to smack a nail in to a piece of wood. The great irony though, was you were unable to touch any of the hammers. That’s right – in the Hammer museum … you can’t touch this!

Having been culturally enriched, hammer-wise, we dumped out gifts from the gift shops back on the boat and headed out again for our “Deluxe Haines Tour”.

Haines is one of those pretty picture-postcard towns, almost everywhere you look you think you could be starting at the box of a jigsaw puzzle – it’s all trees and mountains and water, and cute little houses – just made for renting on to cardboard and cutting into 1000 pieces so people can try to put it back together again.

Our first proper stop was the American Bald Eagle Foundation and Raptor Centre, where we learned a bit about the local ecosystem and food chain, and also had the chance to see two of their captive bald eagles – both of whom have met with misfortune during their life and wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild.

We also met a Eurasian Eagle Owl – who was very pretty, gave the best ‘Bitch, please!’ facial expressions, and proved very difficult to photograph when in flight. I still have a lot to learn. Still, the thumbprint pictures looks nice – alas at normal size they’re quite out of focus.

We also had the good fortune to meet the founder of the Foundation, who loves a chat, we almost literally had to be dragged off the bus for our next stop, The Haines Packing Co. It’s a local fish processing and packing/canning plant. Alas when we arrived they’d just recently finished all their processing and the next catch hadn’t yet come in, so there wasn’t an awful lot to see, other than of course more very pretty scenery.

The tour ended with a chance to sample a bit of the local fare – a simple but nice dish of smoke salmon, cream cheese, dill and lemon zest rolled into a ball. Very tasty, I’ll be steal this idea back in Sydney. It was also a good chance to get a photo or two of our little boat.

We re-boarded the boat, well ahead of our 9:00pm departure time, admiring this scenery while we waited to sail on to the next destination.

I think for he next seven days these blog entries might be pretty short. And not just because I’m only able to upload a few photos per day.

Today, we’re st sea, no stops, just us, a boat, about 1800 other people, and the endless sea.

So, not many photos I can post about the view. This has been the view from our balcony for the whole day:

We haven’t been dying from boredom though – we had brekky down in the dining room, wandered around the decks past all the different bars and restaurants, enjoyed some cocktails, and visited the “taco station” for lunch – just walk up and build your own tacos from a whole bunch of ingredients.

We also attended a talk in the theatre regarding how to make the most of the stops we’ll be making on the journey.

In the afternoon we had room service deliver us a cheese plate and some bikkies, because, you know, why not? It’s all included in the price, after all.

It has, very literally, been smooth sailing, the boat very slowly and gently rocks just enough so you know it’s happening, but not that it’s a problem. As someone who used to get really car sick as a youngster, I’m happy to say I’ve been absolutely fine so far.

Haven’t seen any whales or any other wildlife, but with any luck that will change tomorrow once we get out of the open sea and into Glacier Bay. You’d never guess – it’s a bay. With glaciers!

Before dinner we attended a session in the theatre where the captain took a moment to introduce himself. From his accent it was very clear to tell that Holland America lines does indeed employ people from The Netherlands. (I was waiting for him to mention ‘shmoke and a pancake’, but no. )

We have learnt that you kinda need to sick to the somewhat regimented dining hours – but we did still get to enjoy some very tasty pizza, and some good desserts from the parts that were still open. I mean to say, you’ll never go hungry as there’s room service available all the time, this was just for dining in a dining area.

When we returned from dinner we found he sure fire way to know you’re in a cruise. That’s right, a towel animal 🙂

The view could be pretty much exactly what we woke up to – water. It’ll all change tomorrow – looking forward to getting up close, but not too personal, with the glaciers of Glacier Bay.

‘Til then, happy cruising!

Today was the day we farewelled Anchorage, and took a bus down to Seward, to start out cruise to Vancouver.

Kate, our driver, is just an all round lovely human being. She’s lived in Alaska for a good 30 years and know it inside out – it was great hearing about her experiences and life as an Alaskan. Our trip to Seward wasn’t a mad dash, there was time to stop at a few lookouts, and an excellent wilderness sanctuary – they take in injured or orphaned animals, like bear, musk ox, wolves, lynx, moose, caribou, etc. Although we had a whole hour here it did in a way feel rushed, could probably have spent a bit more time there conversing with the bears and watching the wolves. Fascinating place. And as a result, there’s a ton of photos. As for how many I can share, that all depends on the slow internet on board this boat. Man those wolves are photogenic though…

(This is only about half the photos I wanted to upload, it’s just taking tooooo long to upload them)

The scenery pretty much the entire way from Anchorage to Seward was just incredible. Mountains, glaciers, more mountains, trees, trees, trees… it was unrelentingly gorgeous, I don’t know how you could ever get sick of it. (well, maybe when it’s 20 below zero and totally in covered in snow)

We reached Seward around 1PM, the boat was already sitting there waiting, so on we went. Here goes the cruise! The ms Westerdam is suitably large, we eventually found our room (sorry, stateroom) without too much bother. It’s quite nice, I’d heard that generally boat rooms are pretty small – this isn’t huge, but larger than I was expecting. There are bars and food places and entertainments strewn about all over the ship – we popped up to the top deck for a spot of lunch, had a wander around, and then took part in the mandatory evacuation drill. I was a bit surprised that most of the crowd weren’t taking it all seriously – talking over announcements, generally carrying on. But anyway, job done, then it was time for a very nice dinner. Considering the dinner is included in the price of the cruise I didn’t have the greatest of expectations, but was really impressed with the food.

I’m less impressed with the internet – but I kinda knew I’d end up caving in and buying it. They did warn us it would be a bit slow – and yep that’s pretty accurate.

So not a very big update today – but that’s what we did. Travelled to Seward, got on a boat, an set sail. Right now it’s 11PM and still bright as anything. Yep it still weird, yep I’m still not used to it. But it sure is pretty.

Tomorrow we’re all at sea. All day. Might give more time to upload the other pictures:)

Good night!

Up and at ‘em a bit early today for a tour.  Last night it was weird going to bed when it was still bright outside – and it looked just the same at 6am.  Always bright.  It has been quite overcast so no telling really where the sun was.  Just this constant, somewhat grey, light.

Breakfast was interesting.  It’s kind rude to point out faults – but I think they were caught a bit unawares about an influx of more than the usual number of customers on a Saturday. As a result, I think things were rushed, things were missed, but we did eventually still get fed.  French toast and cubed fried potatoes, that’s a new breakfast sensation…

Our tour around Anchorage was good – glad we had to chance to get off the main street grid.  Fun fact, avenues are numbered, Streets are lettered,  from A to R or so.  So yes, you can live on “A Street”. Don’t we all?).  It must be a challenge getting mail if you live at “1 I St”, depending on what font you use.  But, it does make it easy to get from A to B  😀

We went to a small kind-of-museum but not, more an empty space in the ground floor of a mall, which had a lot of interesting info about the 1964 earthquake.  It was massive (8.6), an lasted 5 minutes, which I can’t imagine what that must have been like.  A whole town was literally wiped off the map, the surviving residents were moved miles and miles away to start again.  A few other towns ended up around 50 feet away from their original locations, just from the face of the earthquake.  It also destroyed the commercial port operations of the town of Whittier, which were never rebuilt.  

We saw Ship Creek, where only today fishing was allowed to recommence, it had been stopped for a few weeks to give the salmon a chance.  There are pretty strict rules around fishing – it’s all licenced, and most fishers are allowed to catch 3 salmon a day, or more if they have a larger family.  There were other rules about other type of fish, but I wasn’t getting too close to the guy at Ship Creek who was busily gutting a salmon right in front of us, to hear all the details  Not so soon after breakfast, thanks.

 Next stop – The Uru Factory.  Whereupon, the great mystery was finally revealed.  What’s an Uru?  If you’ve ever seen  Mezzaluna blade, you’ve seen an Uru.  A rounded knife where you chop everything with a rocking motion.  THey’re great for chopping herbs or nuts, for example.  We didn’t buy one.  So at this point of the tour, we were, quite literally, up Ship Creek without an Uru.  Nearby was the main rail yard of Anchorage – where the train horns were on full blast, often.  Our tour driver also navigated about 5 level crossings in the space of about 30 seconds, which was a pretty good effort.

Whilst driving around we had the good fortune to see a moose – I put my fancy new zoom lens to use and managed to achieve some at-least-mediocre shots of her.  

This was near the airport – the commercial airport and the less commercial (and less airport-y) Lake Hood and Lake Spenard.  Alaska is a pretty big place.  And there’s a whole lot of it that isn’t serviced by roads.  So people use planes here, a lot.  And that means a lot of planes.  They nearly all have pontoons for water landings, and they all live around Lake Hood and Lake Spenard.  I’d never seen so many little planes gathered together before.

But we probably only saw a tiny proportion.  Take a look at Apple Maps: Turnagain — Anchorage  or Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/@61.1813445,-149.9728626,1330m/data=!3m1!1e3

Zoom in a bit and you’ll see what I mean.  Heaps of planes.  We hear them quite often as they buzz over head, off to wherever it is they’re going.

It also lead a case of “well, you don’t see that street sign every day…”

Alaska Wild Berry products was our next stop – home of “The world’s largest chocolate fountain”  – which may or may not true. And who knows, it may or may not be chocolate.  But they did have lots of lovely chocolate and fudge on sale.  I picked up some fudge – choc-mint, and maple-walnut, both of which were very tasty.  I mean it’s just sugar sugar and more sugar so how can it go wrong. 🙂

The next stop may sound a bit odd to do on a touristy adventure around town – but we went to a hospital.  Nope,  no sickness or injuries among our touring friends – the Alaskan Native Medical Centre (I guess I should begrudgingly spell it ‘Center’) is a large hospital dedicated to the Native Alaskan population.  But still, why are we visiting it?  It hs some amazing displays of Native Alaskan arts and crafts spread across several floors.  It helped to highlight the resourcefulness or naive Alaskans, and in a way the respect they’d show for the native wildlife – anything that they killed, they found a use for pretty much the entire animal.  For example bags were made out of stomachs of animals, nothing was wasted. It was a really interesting display of the ongoing culture of native Alaskans, and a testament to the skills of the artists, both ancient, and current.

Last stop of today’s tour was “Alaska Sausage and Seafood” – well, ok, why not?  We sampled some reindeer sausage, and secretly apologised to Santa for doing so. Tasted just like regular salami … so maybe there’s something the regular salami makers aren’t telling us?  I also found a jar of Knoblauch.  I don’t know what it does, but it did make me giggle. (This blog does not come with any guarantee that its author will always act like a grown-up). Knoblauch! hehehe.  The whole shop had a large european influence – with Droste coca, Ritter chocolate, and a shedload of Dr Oetker products.

With the tour concluded, we headed off to the Saturday market.  Could it get any more Alaskan than this street sign …

We bought some cinnamon scrolls for tomorrow’s breakfast, then checked out the local mall.  It has an Apple store!  Of course even though I didn’t need anything I had to go and have a look.  I wandered around the mall while Perry went back to the hotel for a snooze.  One thing about Anhorage  – it’s not a huge town, so everything is pretty close to everything else.  I think all this holidaying is starting to catch up with me, I ended up having an unexpected nap on the lounge in the hotel, but it’s not like we’re going to run out of light in the day!

For dinner we visited “The Slippery Salmon” – and enjoyed ridiculously large meals of meatloaf, and ribs.  I also had an ‘Angry Orchard Hard Cider’ – which wasn’t angry, it was a very sweet cider, almost like drinking apple juice just with  bit of an alcoholic kick.  

Back to to hotel via the fireman’s memorial park – if only so I could say “look how light it is and it’s already half past nine!”

It’s kinda weird to think even though I’m finishing this up at 10:30pm, it’s still as light as anything outside.  My eyes say it doesn’t feel like it’s time to go to sleep, although my body is telling me otherwise.

Tomorrow – time for a change of scenery as we head down to Seward, and start our cruise!  Just a heads-up that blog entries might get a bit thin on the ground after this – depends how much the cruise line wants to gouge us for internet access.  Just assume that no news = good news! And no news also probably equals a stupid amount of photos once we’re back online.  Anyway, as always, lets see what happens.

Bye Anchorage!

Sorry, the internet in Anchorage appears to have turned to custard so no blog today. It’s all written, it just can’t upload the photos. If it does publish well that’s s bonus, but it’s not looking likely.

I’ll try again in the morning.

We boarded our flight to Alaska, and spent a while on the tarmac at Seattle airport. This wasn’t a surprise considering the long queues of planes i was seeing when we were waiting in the lounge.  But no dramas, eventually our Boeing (of course, it’s Seattle!) 737-900 was on its way. While we were boarding some of the cabin crew were chatting with incoming passengers, and I guess being in Seattle it’s not a surprise that some of them would work for Boeing.  I heard a few ask “This is a Boeing, right?” as they boarded, (I mean, wouldn’t they know?) and a comment from the cabin crew that some people aren’t happy now they’ve taken over Virgin America and some of their fleet is from Airbus. Maybe it’s true, maybe she was just trying to placate the Boeing guy, who knows.  Was amusing, anyway 🙂

There was plenty of  room on our comfy ‘First Class’ seats , however not as much room on all the other planes.  The seat did have a nifty little fold-out tiny-table, just the thing to hold the traditional warm nuts.

Lunch was a surprisingly tasty Chicken Bulgogi-style dish – really nice, full of flavour.

 Other than that it was just another routine flight – Alaska Air staff were really friendly,and they handed out chocolate not long before landing, which is always nice. I mean, when ever is chocolate not a good idea?

After (eventually) getting our bags from the carousel we made it to the hotel.  Now it’s far too early to say if this is indicative of Alaska in general, but things do seem to run at a bit of a different pace. Eventually we were checked in, and happily our room was ready even though we arrived an hour before the offical checkin time, which was great.

The room itself is clean, tidy, and even has a seperate lounge room, which is a first for this trip. It also has an excellent view … of somebody’s truck.  Still, a vast improvement on the view from the room in Seattle 🙂

It also has another one of the dinky hotel room drip-filter coffee machines, with a local (ish) coffee-bag this time. It didn’t taste too bad, as far as filter coffee goes.  Better than the starbucks one at the Seattle hotel.

It was time to do some washing again – I thought we were in luck as there is a dry cleaner directly across the road.  However, they only do dry cleaning, not a normal ‘wash and fold’.  But as luck would have it we then found out the hotel has its own laundry – so, armed with a stack of quarters, we washed our clothes in Tide, threw them into the Speed Queen to dry (she lived up to her name!), and all done.

While waiting for the Speed Queen to do her thing, we wandered up the road to the Midnight Sun Cafe – nice little place, had a delicious Turkey Avocado melt, and I made sure I put a pin in their “Where are you visiting us from” map.

Later, for dinner, we headed to the nearby La Cabaña restaurant, mostly because it was a minute’s walk away and they had a deal where hotel guests get 10% off. Score!

It proved to be a good idea- delicious Mexican food, promptly served. And they had fried ice cream. What’s not to like?

After that, it was time to walk all the way back to hotel (again, for one minute), and wonder how the heck 9:30pm can look like it’s 2pm outside, it’s still so light, and will remain so until about 11:30 tonight. I know it’s just coz it’s way up north, so it’s not magic, but I’m so not used to it. They posted a handy sign at the hotel. In July, on average, there are 21.36 hours of daylight.

The general streetscape in our part of town is kinda, I dunno, bleak.

There was a 9.2 earthquake back in the sixties, so I guess it helps explains why there are lots of very solid, but not very tall, buildings. Still, as we learnt in Seattle, you can’t judge a whole city based on one block. So tomorrow, we’re off to discover a bit more about Anchorage.

As they say on the telly, stay tuned! 🙂

 

This was our last day in Seattle.  We decided to become like the locals and not start on anything too early.  We had a tour lined up for 11:30 so we wandered down to Pike Place Market at around 9, for breakfast.  We went back to Honest Biscuits, which had offered us a very nice sample of a biscuit on yesterday’s foodie tour.  Going back for brekky was a smart move!  I had a delicious “macGregor” biscuit – with cheese and bacon.  This was very different to Biscuit Bitch.  This biscuit was just cut in half and buttered, it wasn’t totally buried in gravy, cheese, grits and scrambled egg like the Biscuit Bitch one (which wasn’t at all bad, just different).  Basically the macgregor was a really nice savoury scone.  But I’m also happy to report that, at last I found great coffee!  Honest Biscuit don’t just do a good biscuit, they do a good cappuccino as well.  I’d give it an 8 on the iScott Coffee Scale.

We wandered around the Pike Place Market a bit – the ‘day stalls’ they talked about really are often just hired for the day – today they had a whole bunch of different vendors selling a whole bunch of different stuff, which was nice to see.  Still amazing cheap flowers and yummy produce though.  We also managed to find a few other parts of the market that we hadn’t found yesterday – bonus!  We wandered our way from the market down the Pier 54, past a good number of touristy shops, which is all good fun when you are indeed a tourist.  

Today we boarded the Argosy “Good Time II”, for another cruise.  The tour was called, and I kid you not “Tillicum excursion”.  Yep, you heard it here first, I’m going to cruise Tillicum. Oh myyyy. (I never said this blog was going to be particularly highbrow, did I? Good.)  This was a cruise out to Blake Island, about 45 minutes out of Seattle.

Along to way we learnt a little about the Duwamish tribe.  At the time the white people started making their way here across the Oregon Trail, the chief of the Duwamish tribe was a certain “Chief Seattle”. HIs name was Si’ahl, Seattle was just the nearest approximation the white settlers made of his name. Chief Si’ahl welcomed the newcomers and brokered a pretty good peace, there was plenty of trade in skills and good between the owners of the land and the newcomers.  Chief Si’ahl remains a deeply respected man here in Seattle.  You can learn more about the Duwamish here: https://www.duwamishtribe.org .  It’s very important to note – they are still here.  It’s an ongoing, living culture, they’re not a piece a history. The tribe is still going strong.

Tillicum was established on Blake Island in the early 1960s.  It was established as a place for people to come and learn more about the native american history (and present) of this part of the country.  So to an extent it’s all a bit ‘staged’, but if it helps shed a bit of light on the history and way people lived, then it’s not necessary a bad thing.  Upon arrival at the island we were greeted with a mug full of clams in broth.  Well at least now I’ve learnt that I don’t much care for clams.  The cool thing was we get to contribute to the upkeep of the island .. as after eating the clams it’s tradition to just chuck the shells on the ground, and crush them with you shoes.  Voila – you’ve just maintained the path. 

A few the bits and piece i learned – Puget Sound it pronounced Pew-Jet by the locals.  I always thought it was Pu-Zhay, you know, like the renowned fashion boutique, Target 🙂 But no.  I also learned that modern Seattle is a very young city.  It was only founded in 1851.  It’s the fastest growing city in America, they say.  They also said it currently has one third of all cranes in the USA>  And judging by the skyline I’m inclined to believe it.  There really is a lot going on, they’re currently riding high on the technology boom.  Also, Mount Rainier is pretty show, on average it’s only visible for about 90 days of the year.  Today it was really clear, so here are about 1000 more pictures of it (hey, at least there aren’t as many Space Needle photos this time, right? 🙂 )

 

Did I take a lot of photos of Mr Rainier today? Why yes, yes I did …

 

But back to Blake Island.  We were ushered into a longhouse – normally like the headquarters of a tribe.  But in this case, a dinner-and-a-show venue.  Upon entering we saw the salmon being cooked in the traditional way which is really clever.  It’s butterflied, mounted on stakes and cooked around a big fire for about an hour.  It produces a delicious, moist, and lightly smokey salmon dish which was just wonderful.  There was also a bunch of other food – as far a s a tourist buffet goes it was good quality stuff, very tasty. (sorry, no photo, too hungry!)

There was also a stage show showing some traditional costume, dance, and amazing wooden masks made to pay tribute to the spirits of the land.  Dare I say this was a bit touristy since much of it was delivered via a projection rather than by real people. But hopefully it’s at least making some contribution toward keeping the local culture alive.  Although there were totem poles aplenty at Tillicum, this part of the country really didn’t have much of a thing for hotel poles.  They were usually only a few feet high, usually to honour a single person.  But they also have this excellent concept of “shame poles”.  If somebody owes you something, and doesn’t pay up, you carve up a Shame Pole in their likeness, and place it in front our their house.  One of the arms of the figure on the shame pole is outstretched as if to be – so the whole neighbourhood instantly knows that you’re not coming good on some kid of debt.  However when you do pay up, the figure is carved in such a way that the arm is articulated, so can them be moved up in to a greeting position.  So you pay your debt, and next thing you know you have a tribute to yourself on your front lawn – very nice!

At the conclusion of the show we had a little bit of time to wander around the island.  Just before the boat landed we were told how the place was positively brimming with wildlife, especially deer (which swim across the sea in the summer!) and racoons.  They’re all pretty tame and not started of humans, but of course don’t try to pat them, we were advised.  Maybe the day was just too warm, because there wasn’t a raccoon or deer to be seen – maybe they’d all buggered off to the more shady parts, but on  our wander around we didn’t see or hear evidence of a single one of them.  We were fortunate enough however to see an eagle nearby at the dock.

There’s a bit more info about Tillicum village here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillicum_Village

We arrived back at Seattle itself – it was a bit hard to believe that was a 4 hours + tour, the time went so quickly.  It was great to learn more, if only a little bit more, about the culture of the original inhabitants of these lands.  There’s so much more to learn and appreciate though.

We had a wander around through some shops – which reminded me of something I forgot to mention yesterday.  We went into Target, and they had this cool novelty – in additional to a people escalator, they had one specially rom trolleys as well.  How nifty!

We also saw an amusing bit of, I dunno, civil disobedience?

We also saw the very large, always moving, Hammering Man sculpture:

On the way back to the hotel we stoped in at the Dahlia Bakery which is quite close by.  Home of the famous triple coconut pie.  (again, I am not convinced how famous it actually is).  But Dahlia Bakery is one of the fourteen or so restaurants in Seattle owned by mister ‘love rub’ himself, Tom Douglas.  Sure enough it was a delicious pie – very very rich, even I couldn’t quite finish it.  But Perry, being a coconut fanatic, really enjoyed it (and the rest of mine).

For dinner we headed out to ‘Lola’ – another Tom Douglas restaurant.  It had Saganaki Cheese, so of course we had to go.  It was ‘Mediterranean’ – so they borrowed a bit from here and there, primarily Greek.  It was all good – high quality, delicious food, including made-to-order doughnuts right at the end.  Awesome.  Not cheap, but awesome.  A fitting way to end our stay.

 

So in conclusion… Seattle, we got off to a rocky start, but you’ve won me over.  I never realised it was such a foodie town, there’s good food to be had everywhere.  There’s good coffee to be had somewhere – that’s surprising enough.  It has a lot of natural beauty around, with so much water, and of course the imposing figure of Mt Rainier.  Glad to see it at least putting some effort in to recognising and working with its indigenous peoples, too.  Pike Place Market is wonderful, the Jetsons-tastic Space Needle puts its definitive stamp on the city’s skyline, and we were fortunate to have amazing summer weather every day.  It’s been good!

Tomorrow… time to head even further north.

We hung out at Pike Place Market to kill a bit of time before today’s next adventure, the ‘locks cruise’.

So – Seattle is just like Camden, right?  They have locks to help the boats cope with changes in the water level.   OK so they’re very, very different but not to worry.  The lock we travelled through today was to seperate the tidal and saltwater Puget Sound, from the higher, non-tidal, freshwater Lake Union and Lake Washington.

So we boarded the “Good Time III” and off we went.  Happy to say we could still see Mt Rainier, and the ubiquitous Space Needle.  Lots of little planes flying around, too.  Well, at least one or two.

 

We passed by the WaterEdge hotel – still considering its famous for having the Beatles stay there in 1964 or so – there’s a photo of them fishing out of the window, as the hotel is indeed on the edge of the water.  There’s a bit of info about it here: http://www.meetthebeatlesforreal.com/2014/08/beatles-at-edgewater-hotel.html

The hotel was built for the 1962 World’s Fair – a big deal, that caused many other new things to be built, the Space Needle being the biggest one.  Unfortunately not everything goes according to plan, especially when trying to built a hotel over water for the first time ever, so the hotel successfully opened … two weeks after the World’s Fair had closed down.  They marketed it by saying you could fish out of the windows, and indeed you could.  They even had a bait shop on the ground floor.  But once you caught a fish and hauled it up a couple of storeys … well, hotel rooms aren’t renowned for their fish-processing equipment. Things got messy.  And I can’t being to imagine the smell.  Apparently though they didn’t ban fishing from the windows until the 1980s.

There was also a cruise ship in dock, the tour guide on the boat noted that in the last few years Seattle has become very popular port for cruises.

Up through the Puget Sound we sailed, past pretty-but-landfall-prone Queen Anne, and past a particularly short light-house.  This is due the water not being so deep so that boats weren’t so big. Something like that.  It also happened to line up nicely with Mt Rainier, which was still just making itself visible:

 

We also saw the mountains that weren’t Mt Rainier, but still pretty.

We hung a right at Shilshole bay, past a number of what must have been expensive houses, and of course if you live there you must have your own boat.  Now anybody who knows anything at all about boats (note: this is totally not me) would now that for your boat to last longer, you really should keep it out of the salty water. It’s not the best thing for boats.  What’s the solution?

That’s right – a boat elevator.  At least I learned stuff on this cruise. 🙂

The next bit was really interesting.  It’s not unusual to have a rail bridge going over the water, right?  That may even have been the long-rumoured missing verse of the Tom Jones song. Who can say.  It’s also not that unusual to have a bridged that raises part of itself up to let taller boats go through underneath.  So far, all normal.  The different part about this bridge, is that its mostly there for the benefit of the boats rather than the trains.  It spends most of its time in the open position, blocking the train track but letting the boats through,  It’s only when a train comes through that the bridge lowers back down, kinda like a ginormous version of a barrier at a level crossing.  Luckily enough this happened while we were passing by.  I did take a video, but oo-ee was it kind dull. If I do a speeded-up version I’ll post that some time.  The bridge itself, though kinda looking like it was ready to all apart, sure looked interesting.  It was a counterweight bridge – meaning it had this massive several-hundred-ton lump of metal on one end, to counteract the weight of the moveable rail parts. Here’s how it looks most of the time – it’s really quite a striking figure.

Kinda stands out, right?  I can’t imagine it having any chance of being built these days, so close to all the fancy houses whose owners probably have a PhD in Nimby-ism.

I even did a ye-olde-worlde version of it when it was closed, since it looks kinda old and falling apart.

And here it is with the freight train on it, to give a sense of the sheer scale of the thing.

 

Just beyond this bridge was the lock.  There are two locks, big and small.  Our boat fits in the small one with less than a foot spare on each side, but they expertly piloted it in.  The are with the lock also has a spillway if the lake level gets too high, and a fish ladder, so the salmon can still make their way upstream even when the lock is closed.  A few clever salmon decided to use the lock along with the boat, though.

There was also a sealion supervising proceedings nearby, which was pretty cool,

Now I know the whole point of this cruise today was to see the locks – but I successfully managed to not get any good photos of it, mostly because everyone else rushed to the front of the boat before I did.  But hopefully this tells some of the story. Sorry about my wonky camera work.

After going through the lock (and being lifted 13 feet higher in the process) we proceeded past a number of tug bots and commercial fishing vessels, and the town of Ballard.  Ballard had remained seperate from Ballard for quite some time, until ultimately it wasn’t terribly well managed and had to go begging to Seattle for drinking water, and in exchange the town had to start paying taxes and basically be annexed by Seattle.  They still try to maintain a it of an independent spirit, allegedly one of their popular bumpers stickers is a tongue-in-cheek “End the 100 years of tyranny!” message.

 

Not far out of Ballard, we reached Lake Union proper – the same place we cruised around yesterday in the Duck.  There were a few more people out today, including a dog on a stand-up-paddle board.  Alas if only it was a stand-up-poodle.  At least I guess it was dog-paddling…

We also passed under the Fremont bridge, only about six inches taller that the boat is.  They had to fold down the aerials and even the flag, before it would fit under.

It was in Lake Union that our tour completed – but not before we had the good fortune of watching a sea place take off close by, that was pretty cool.

The tour didn’t end where it began – there was an option to take a boat back to Pier 55 where we began, but that wasn’t going to save us any time compared to walking, so we walked back to the hotel.

It was here I tried the in-house Starbucks coffee with the drip filter.  I don’t know if any Americans are reading  – but Australia pretty much gave up on the drip filter in the 80s.  But glad to see there have been some innovations since then.  Instead of having to tip ground coffee into a filter, there’s now just a big coffee bag that sits in the percolator, makes life easier.  (Still not as easy as popping a Nespresso pod in the machine at home, I gotta say)

I switch on the machine and minutes later, ta-da! A cup of, well, pretty awful coffee. Way over-roaster as seems to be the Starbucks tradition, and it was decaf, so … yeah.  (Still better than brekky in Auckland, just sayin’!). Ah well, at least I know now.

For dinner, we had to go back to Pintxo.  There were so many things on the menu that still looked so good, we had to go back to try them.  And we were not disappointed.  A charcuterie board. We had an incredible toasted bread with tomato, vinegar, and oil – kinda like a bruschetta only much better behaved as the tomato was reduced almost to a paste. A delicious, none-more-tomato-y paste.  We had pork sausage with apple puree. Again, everything was delicious, not a bad dish on the menu once again.  The ‘infused G&T’ was also pretty remarkable.  So glad we went back – our waitress (yeah, we’re that close, we calling her ‘ours’ now) remembered us (well it was only a day) and was again really friendly and really good at her job.  Seriously impressed with Pintxo.

 

Tomorrow is the last full day in Seattle… we have plans, and course, you’ll hear all about it soon.