Sunday August 9, 2009 - Seattle, Washington

Well, this is the end of our three week journey. It is now Sunday evening and we are flying out of Seattle for New York tomorrow morning. It has been a very exciting three weeks as we have seen the hinterlands of Alaska, cruised along the Alaskan coast and fjords and finished up with a week in the Northwest, seeing Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. In order to see any of the photos full size, simply click on that photo.

The past two days in Seattle have been exciting. We have done a tremendous amount of walking here in Seattle and the bottoms of our feet are now burning. Yesterday after our breakfast we walked to the Pioneer Park area of town, passing by the two ball fields........Safeco Field where the Seattle Mariners play baseball and Qwest Field where the Seattle Seahawks play football. Continuing on our walking journey through Seattle, we walked through the International District which is sometimes referred to as Chinatown. This one neighborhood is known as the International District since various Asian groups live in this one neighborhood. We also passed Union Station, a major train station in Seattle that borders the International district. This station was built in 1911 to serve the Union Pacific railroad. Today it is used by Amtrak, among other railroad lines. Moving on, we walked by one of the many locations of Amazon.com, which is based in Seattle. At this point we must have walked several miles already today, but kept going. We headed back to the excitement and food of the Pike Street Market for a bit of lunch. Today we started with potato, onion and cheddar Peroshkies at the famous Russian bakery, Peroshky Peroshky. These were so, so tasty........ we knew we would be back here tomorrow for a few more, of a different variety. After our Peroshkies, we were drawn back to Beechers, for some more of that outstanding macaroni & cheese that I raved about yesterday. Kind of full, we kept on our walk and headed back to the Space Needle......... yesterday we purchased a 24 hour ticket, so today we could see Seattle from the top during the daylight. This had to be another mile or so walk. After taking many photos from the top, we decided it was time to walk back to our room, in the central part of downtown......... at least another mile walk. We arrived back at the B&B, and had some wine & cheese before resting a bit before dinner. We had an 8 PM reservation for dinner at a rather nice restaurant this evening, Restaurant Zoe. For dinner, Gail had Halibut and I had Sockeye Salmon, in addition to cocktails and salads. By 9:30 we were on our way back to our room........again, walking.

Today, Sunday, our last day in Seattle, we decided to not do as much walking and have an easy day. After breakfast we again went to the Pike Street Market........ this time to buy a pound of smoked salmon at one of the fish vendors. We had tasted it yesterday and it was so moist & tasty, that I had to have some to bring home. As long as I was having the smoked salmon wrapped for the journey home, we also purchased some salmon jerky, which was quite a treat as well. We brought this back to our room to put in the mini fridge and relaxed there a bit and read today's paper. After an hour or so of relaxation, we went back to Pike Street Market for lunch. Today, I had a Greek Gyro and Gail had a broccoli, onion and mozarella peroshky. After lunch we browsed by the arts and crafts vendors in the market and then sat by a small park for a bit and rested before heading back to the B&B for the afternoon wine and cheese. After relaxing a bit more at the room, we were out again.........for more food!!! Tonight our dinner was on the light side; Gail and I split a Halibut & Chips plate at the famous Ivar's along the water front. After this light dinner, we headed back to the room for the final time to pack for tomorrow's trip home. As I have stated previously, we had a great time for the past three weeks and really do not look forward to going home and back to the normal routine and "grind" of reality.