A byootaful Life

It’s always a good idea to research how you’re going to get from the airport to your hotel whenever you go on holiday, especially if you are dragging along a lot of luggage. We did, but we didn’t do a thorough job. We figured out that we needed to catch the train from Seattle airport to King Street Station, then catch a bus that travelled along the street our hotel was on.

I didn’t think to actually check when to get off said bus, so we found ourselves on a PACKED bus, hurtling along the street, trying to peek out over the people and our abundant luggage for a hint of where on earth we were. We didn’t know how long it would take to get to our hotel (not even an estimate!) so we were pretty unprepared. As the bus stopped to let passengers off, I saw in the near distance, our hotel’s sign and happily reported this to Phill. We decided to get off at the next stop, since it was too late to get off that this one.

You can guess what happened. We pressed the stop request as soon as we moved back onto the road… and our bus hurtled past our hotel. And kept going. And going. And going. Oh-oh. It finally pulled over and let us off about a good 10 minute walk from our hotel, which wouldn’t have worried us if we weren’t lugging about 70+kgs of luggage and the street paths weren’t cracked and uneven and narrow. And it was hot. Grumpily we began the trek back to the hotel. After checking in, all we wanted to do was crash on the bed, but we decided to suck it up and go see the Seattle Space Needle, since it was only a few minutes’ walk from where we were staying.

We’ve done a lot of towers in a lot of countries but we were still keen to go up and see Seattle from up high, so we purchased two adult tickets (CA$27 total) and got in the elevator. We decided to go up then because by this point, it was still light but would be going dark in an hour or so, so we’d get the best of both worlds – Seattle by day and Seattle by night. You can purchase a more expensive ticket which allows re-entry once so you can go up once and see daytime, then go up later and see night – I recommend buying the regular ticket and doing what we did – go up late afternoon so you’ll get both!

So pretty! The view was really quite wonderful. Even though it was freezing out on the viewing deck, I sucked it up so I could have a good 360 degree view of the city. The needle itself is pretty cool, with lots of interesting exhibits and displays inside with information about the needle, Seattle and the views. Take the time to read about how the needle’s design and construction happened – amazing that nobody died during the building of it – although there were apparently a few close calls!

Pretty soon, the sun started to sink lower…

… and then it was time for Seattle by night!

We stayed up on the observation deck for a while, enjoying a coffee and watching while Seattle bustled on, 520 feet below us. We watched the tourists taking their Myspace-style photos, played around with my lenses (wow, talk about zoom!) and basically just sat and relaxed. It was a really nice way to say hello to Seattle, especially since we only had one more day there before we were going to catch a train to Vancouver, our final destination.