CDSamurai: Alaskan Cruise 2017

Friday, August 25, 2017

Alaskan Cruise 2017 - Day 9: Seattle

July 14, 2017, our last morning on board the ship. We stayed in Seattle for the day and left for home the next morning.

4am: Edmonds, WA

5:15am: Seattle

Good morning Seattle

We docked in Seattle early this morning, but weren't scheduled to disembark until 9:30am. At 7:00 Todd and I got up, put our overnight clothes in our backpacks (remember they collected our luggage the night before) and left our toiletries out in the bathroom while we went to breakfast figuring we would shower after we got back to our room. Big mistake.

We got back to our room only to find the door propped open and the room already (mostly) cleaned and staged for the next occupants who would arrive later that day. All of our toiletries we left on the shelves in the bathroom had been tossed: toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorants, dental floss, etc. It was nothing of any significant value, but still...you'd think it would be fairly obvious that we hadn't just accidentally forgotten all our grooming items - that we were planning on coming back and using them before leaving the ship at our designated time which was still 2 hours away. *sigh* There was no room attendant in sight, and it wouldn't have done any good to complain at that point anyway, so we used the bathroom one last time and went down to the Schooner Bar on deck 4 to meet John and Norma. I made sure to include this final disappointment and the weeklong dining fiasco in my response to the survey Royal Caribbean sent after we had arrived back home.

The bar was the designated waiting place for those needing mobility assistance disembarking the ship, and having arranged for one for John at the Service desk earlier, we waited for an available wheelchair. We ended up disembarking around 9:00 and walked into a madhouse at the cruise terminal. The luggage that was constantly coming off the ship was grouped together in long rows by tag numbers provided the night before and by disembarkation time - everyone had to walk up and down the narrow rows to find their own luggage and pull it out of the staging area. There were people everywhere.

It took a few minutes to locate John and Norma's bags and wheel them to the center aisle so they could go through customs with the wheelchair attendant. We then waded back in for our own bags which we found a few minutes later.

Going through customs was a breeze. Finding John and Norma in the crush of people outside the terminal was not so easy. The attendant had put them in a long taxi line for some reason. We eventually found them and the four of us went to the ride share line. After getting accepted, then declined by two different Lyft drivers when they called to confirm we were going downtown and not to the airport, we got a ride on the 3rd try. We arrived at the W Hotel around 10:30am and made arrangements with the driver (who was great, btw) to pick us up the next morning and take us to the airport.

John and Norma and the largest record collection in the world
:)

Our "Mega Room" bathroom at the W Hotel

The "Mega Room"

We chose not to stay in a suite this time around. This room was just fine.

The view includes the Space Needle

There it is

Looking toward the door

The room reflected on the turned-off tv looks more fun

We checked in to the W and took a bit to catch our collective breaths before heading out at 11:30. Our destination: The Space Needle via monorail. We walked 3 blocks to the monorail station bought round-trip tickets to Seattle Center where the Space Needle resides.

The monorail has 2 stops: Downtown and Seattle Center

The downtown station is at the Westlake Center mall

All aboard

Arriving at our destination

Tickets for the SN are on a timed-entry queue system and the first available time was 2:00-2:30. John decided to sit this one out, so we bought 3 tickets and walked to the nearby Armory for lunch. Inside was a large food court with a good variety of food types. Todd and I chose Bigfood BBQ. The dry-rubbed chicken sandwich with 3-cheese mac-n-cheese and raisin slaw was good. I followed it up with a half-slice of European Dark fudge from Seattle Fudge, and that was also good.

You didn't think I was going to give you my code did you? tsk tsk
:)

"No myth. Just great barbeque."

You had me at "fudge"

At 2:00 we got in line for the SN and eventually were taken to the top. What no one tells you in advance is that at the top it smells like the most delicious caramel/kettle corn you could imagine. I'm not sure how we left without buying any, but we did. We looked around the city (Aaah! Giant spiders!) for awhile and then rode the elevator back down to the gift shop at the base of the tower. Todd picked up a pair of great robot socks from Sock It To Me and I opted for something more Seattle-ish.

It's pretty tall

Elevator going up

Almost to the top

Neat pointed elevator doors

Different

A view from the top. There's the Explorer of the Seas, back in dock and taking on new passengers.

Ok, so this was unexpected.

This surprising mural was painted on the roof of the Armory building by Marlin Peterson

Looking toward the Olympic mountain range

Downtown with Mt. Rainier in the background

We'd like to come back on a future trip and hike around Mt. Rainier

There's the monorail making its way toward Seattle Center

My fold-out souvenir

The back

International Fountain

We met up with John and rode the monorail back to the downtown station. Once there I popped into a Bartell Drugs across the street and bought replacement toiletries for Todd and I, then we walked John and Norma back to the W.

Rainier Tower, the building with what I call the scooped-out base. Love this design.

Another view

After seeing John and Norma back to their room and deciding what to do for dinner, Todd and I walked back to the monorail station and bought one-way tickets to Seattle Center. We explored International Fountain and the area around the Space Needle, then walked through the Olympic Sculpture Park on our way down to the piers.

We stopped for a moment to call in our order to Yard House then walked up through Pike Place Market to the restaurant. We took the food back to the hotel and ate with John and Norma in their room. My Vampire Tacos were delicious.