Sunday, July 7, 2024
I woke up around seven this morning and we were already docked in Seattle and in fact they were starting to let people off the ship. They don’t let everyone off at once and depending on the time of flights and other factors, they assign you into groups and you don’t get off until your group number is announced over the PA system.
The first group to leave is always people that carry all their luggage out themselves, so they were called immediately. Because we are in a suite, we have priority and were the next group called, but we are staying overnight and had no reason to rush off so we stayed in bed until 7:30.
After getting up, dressed and cleaned up, we made our way to the Neptune Lounge and had our final breakfast there and then returned to our room until 9:00 when we decided it was time to get off.
We are taking the train back home and it leaves at 10:00 in the morning, and we just weren’t sure we would make it off the ship and to the station in time, so we decided to play it safe and stay overnight. It turns out that this was one of the most efficient and quick debarkation we have experienced, and we probably could have made the train, but you never know.
At nine we left the ship and made our way to the terminal to claim our luggage. There was a steady stream of people leaving, but it was quite orderly and there was no standing in line waiting for anything. We found our luggage, but we had a scare when we couldn’t find one of our bags, but that was my fault as I was looking for the wrong one; another senior moment for me.
Besides our smaller luggage, we had two large bags we were shipping home using a company called Luggage Forward, so we found a porter that loaded everything onto a cart and took us out to find the Luggage Forward representative who had been texting me his location. We had no trouble finding him, but it was a long walk, and I don’t know how we could have gotten our luggage out there without a porter.
After dropping our two large bags off with Luggage Forward, our porter hauled the rest of our luggage to the cab line where we found a taxi. I have to say I tipped the porter generously as we had quite a load and were grateful for his help. We are staying at the Hilton Embassy Suites in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle that is close to the King Street Station where we’ll catch the train tomorrow.
It was quite a ways from the ship to the hotel, but there wasn’t much traffic and we made to the hotel before ten. That was an easy debarkation, it took us less than an hour from the time we left our room to arriving at the hotel. One bonus for us was that as we got out of the taxi, we saw that the train station was right across the street from the hotel, an easy walk.
We checked in, but as expected our room wasn’t ready so we checked our luggage and settled down in the lobby to wait. The hotel is also very close to the Seattle Seahawk stadium and the Seattle Mariner stadium. We noticed there were a lot of people wearing Toronto Blue Jay jerseys so we looked it up and sure enough, the Blue Jays were in town playing the Mariners. We talked to one lady who said she had come in with over 100 others on a chartered flight from Edmonton in Alberta, Canada. She said she had run into quite a few other tours in town from various other locations in Canada. They had come in Saturday and watched the game last night and after going to today’s game, they will leave for home. It created a real hubbub in the lobby.
Val and I got tired of waiting and decided to walk over to the Amtrak station and see what time they would start boarding tomorrow morning, but other than tickets agents, there were no people at the information booths so we gave up and returned to the hotel lobby.
It had been a while since breakfast, so we decided to get some lunch at the 13 Coins Restaurant that was attached to the hotel. Val had read some reviews, and it seemed to be very popular. It was very crowded so we had to wait a bit to be seated, but we had a good lunch and would eat there again.
During lunch I received a text saying our room was ready so after we finished, we checked into our room. Our room is a corner view room on the 14th floor with great views of the city and harbor through the floor to ceiling windows. The room is quite small but will suit us just fine for our one-night stay.
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| Our ship is still docked in the distance (furthest to the left). Just past the Ferris Wheel is the area where we stayed before the cruise. |
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| The clock tower and the building with the green roof is the train station, we were very close. |
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| A nice view of Mount Rainier. |
We relaxed a bit and did a little luggage repacking, and I brought the blog up to date and then we decided to take a walk and explore the area. We revisited the Amtrak station and this time there was someone at the information desk and they said we could expect to board about a half hour before departure so now we know about when to get there tomorrow.
From there we walked a few blocks, but it looked like kind of a depressed area as there were many empty storefronts. There were a few shops, and we found a promising restaurant, but the was about it. We returned to the hotel and relaxed for a while until we started to feel hungry and decided to return to the 13 Coins Restaurant as we had enjoyed our breakfast, and it was very convenient. It was very busy, and we again had to wait a little while, but we eventually got seated and had a delicious dinner.
After dinner we mostly just relaxed until we called it a night. We were both tired as it had been a hectic day. We don’t have to get up too early tomorrow as we start the final leg of our trip.
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