The Mrs. and I took a quick weekend trip to the Northwest this weekend. I had some hotel points and some frequent flyer miles, so we decided to use them. We found that it takes 50,000 miles round trip for one person to fly to most cities on our airline. It was easy to find trips out of here for a lower amount of miles, but there were not many places where we could use the lower amount of miles to get back. But, we saw where we could get to Seattle for 25,000 miles per person, round trip, so we went there. We also got the bright idea to drive to the top of the Olympic Peninsula, and take the ferry to Victoria, British Columbia. So, we left Houston on Friday night for Seattle.
Picture above taken from the car on Highway 101 near Port Angeles. The mountain is in Olympic National Park.
Saturday is when the trip starts to get hairy. We wanted to go to downtown Seattle to see the famous throwing of fish at Pike Place Market. We had reserved a small rental car, but they were out of them, so they gave us an SUV, specifically a Dodge Nitro. Cool, huh? Not quite. On our way to downtown Seattle from the airport hotel, we felt the transmission dragging as it was going up hills. That's not good if you're getting ready to drive into the mountains. We weren't comfortable with it. I had rented a Nitro in Dallas a few months back, and liked it. However, Dallas doesn't have mountains. Back to story..we had a ferry to catch at 12:45 pm, and a 2 1/2 hour drive away. So, instead of going to the market, we went back to the rental car place at the airport, to switch cars. They gave us a Lincoln Town Car. Now, we had a grandpa car to take into the mountains. Actually, the car wasn't bad, and had a lot of bells and whistles which we're not used to. We then drove around Puget Sound, through the mountains and the forests, to Port Angeles, Washington, where our ferry awaited. We then took the boat to Victoria, BC.
Victoria is a beautiful, old, English-looking city. We did not take our car onto the ferry, as we did not need it there, and we didn't want to pay to take the car onto the boat. Shortly after getting off the boat, as we were walking to our hotel, we saw a man dressed as Darth Vader playing a violin. It turns out that he has become quite the institution in Victoria, at least for tourists. Currently, there are 15 clips of him on YouTube.
We got to our hotel, and things went downhill in a hurry. First, we were in a corner room, and the wireless internet connection did not work. We went downstairs to their lounge and hooked up to a wired network. Minor inconvenience, but something we could deal with. However, the hotel was built in probably the 1960's, and did not have central air. There was a portable air conditioning unit on the floor, a little bigger than a desktop CPU. We had never seen anything like it. We got it to work, we thought, but the temperature kept getting higher. We called maintenance, and the maintenance guy looked at it for a bit. He told us it was a brand new unit, and it had not yet been properly installed. It turns out it was blowing cold air from the front, but hot air in the back. They had not hooked an exhaust of hot air from the unit to the outside. There were no other maintenance people, as they were taking the long holiday weekend off for Victoria Day. He informed management, but they told us they were sold out, and they could not move us to another room. So, they sent two oscillating fans to our room, which served as air conditioning for the night. Needless to say, the hotel overpromised and underdelivered. We complained, asking for some compensation, but they only gave us breakfast vouchers at their restaurant.
Nonetheless, we enjoyed our time in Victoria, in spite of the faulty air conditioner.
Sunday, we took the ferry back to the United States. We saw someone sent back to the US on our boat, as Canada will not let persons with a criminal record into their country. DUI is a felony in Canada, and we think this guy had one on his record, so they sent him back on the next boat, right after he had come across from the US. You'd think he was a fish that they threw back into the ocean. Moral of that story: don't drive drunk. We still wanted to see the fish throwing at Pike Place Market, so we grabbed some fast food in Port Angeles, and tried to make one of the ferry crossings across Puget Sound. As we got closer, there was an electric sign warning us of an accident at the entrance to the closest ferry crossing at Kingston. So, we went to the Bainbridge Island crossing, a 35-minute ride directly across from downtown Seattle. We barely made it in time for the crossing (we thought), and were waved through to the line to drive onto the boat. We got to the front, and all the other cars were waved onto the boat except for us. We barely missed the boat! We were not happy. Nonetheless, we waited 50 minutes for the next crossing, and went to downtown Seattle.
By this time, it was 3:30, and we had a 5:50 flight. So, we barely had time to see the market. We found a parking place, went to Pike Place Market, and saw the fish. I had seen it before, but the Mrs. had not, so we made an effort to see it. It was a good thing to see. It was raining (it was Seattle), and they were having the Seattle Cheese Festival in the market area. We didn't have time for cheese, as we had a plane to catch.
Well, we didn't plan our schedule around the Seattle Mariners. The M's were playing downtown at Safeco Field, and the game was over at 4 pm, right when we needed to get to the airport. We got stuck in horrible baseball traffic, then managed to get around and over to Interstate 5 to head down to the airport. The weather was horrible, and we were stuck in traffic for at least 45 minutes. It turns out that someone had flipped their car, and the car overturned on the other side of the barrier in the middle of the highway. What a mess. We were stressing out, and were going to be lucky to make our flight.
We got to the airport, and did not have time to put gas in the rental car (note to self: always get the fuel service option from now on). Market price for gas up there was around $3.50 a gallon. I don't know how much the rental car company was charging per gallon for not filling up the tank, but they charged $95.00 for a 1/2 tank of gas in a Town Car. We weren't happy, but we were trying to make a flight, so we had to do what we had to do. I highly recommend the Fuel Service Option at the rental car counter, even if it's a few cents above the street price.
We got to the Continental counter at about 5:40 or so, and the flight had already boarded. In spite of a driving rainstorm for most of the afternoon, all flights at the airport were running on time. That was a shock to us, as we're used to airports delaying flights whenever someone spits on the ground, much less when it rains. We were cutting it close, and there was no guarantee that both us and our bag would make it to Houston at the same time. So, they booked us onto the next flight. Problem is, the next flight left Seattle at midnight local time, and was scheduled to arrive in the big H at 6:00 AM. We took the flight, and I slept on the redeye to Houston.
That's a lot to cram into one weekend. We had fun, in spite of the inconveniences.
2 comments:
In spite of your obstacles, I'm glad you got to go and have a little fun by yourselves. Not everyone gets to see Darth Vader pickin' a fiddle! More in personal e-mail. Terry
Good for people to know.
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