Post Cruise........Seattle, Washington....

And you thought it was over......HA !   Yes we finished the cruise portion of our travels but we have one more night in Seattle before we have to fly back to reality.

We disembarked around 9am, picked up our suitcase and headed for the cab line.  Finding our luggage was such an easy process, all neatly numbered and lined up in the terminal.  We waited only about 10 minutes total for a cab to downtown.

We chose the Renaissance Hotel Seattle which is a Marriott property.  When Dan travels, and he travels a LOT he always stays at Marriott properties.  We joined their loyalty program years ago and I would strongly recommend everyone to join a hotel program.  It's free and you accumulate points towards future stays.  Of course because it was so early our room wasn't ready, but the 'associate' which is what the employees call themselves tagged our luggage, stored it, gave us a neat map and we were off.

A little note of warning.......Seattle is STEEP.  Holy crap the walk from our hotel on Madison to the waterfront is all downhill making the trek home a little hard on the knees.  But in true Beth fashion we did it anyway.  The first thing I wanted to see was Pike Place Market, because I had heard so much about it.

Little did I know it was huge.  There were if I am remembering correctly 6 levels.  The good thing was there was an elevator on level 1 which you could take, but did we?  NO we climbed the stairs.

This is a pig, this is what I thought was the lucky pig so yes I had to pet it.  Luck evidently was not working because those stairs were extremely hard to climb.

Once on top I found out that this is Billy, who is Rachel "the lucky pig"s cousin.  Ah no wonder it didn't work.

Rachel is a 550lb bronze piggy bank that was brought to the market in 1986 who raises money to support low income families around the market neighborhood.  Not sure of the exact amount but it's over
$200,000.00.  

The first few levels are like a flea market, full of trinkets, collectibles and just plain old stuff.

If you go up to the downtown street level you hit the "Farmers Market" which was my favorite.  Full of fruit, hot sauce, honey inspired food and potions, fish, fast food and a thousand flowers.  Literally thousands of flowers which was amazing to see and smell, my regret was that I wasn't staying longer or I would have taken back a few arrangements to the hotel.

Too pretty for words

I wasn't exaggerating, thousands of flowers

And yes we saw the famous fish market where they throw fishes.  It was funny that the employees had to keep corralling the guests as our numbers kept growing until we were blocking the walk way for the locals who really needed to buy food and stuff.


It was rather comical to us, but not to them.  Also I will recommend getting lemonade while there....mine was mixed with mango and was super refreshing.  I was somewhat warm since I had not had the chance to change my clothes since we disembarked the ship.  I had on slacks, tank top and a light shawl.  By half way thru the market the shawl went into my purse.  Sun doesn't appear that often in Seattle but this particular day the temperatures topped 85*.  Not bad.

A view from Level 5 of the market down the water front.

We still had some time before our room was ready so we looked on our little handy map the associate at the hotel gave us and we found an underground tour that looked interesting.  Now I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about this tour because frankly I want you to go to Seattle, get on that cruise ship to Alaska and then stay the day after and do this tour.   What I will tell you is this, the tour starts in Pioneer Square.   A beautiful place full of restaurants, shade trees and totem poles.

This photo is how I know my vacation is 'technically' over.  Dan is on a conference call while we are waiting for the tour to start.  Oh well, I did have him all to myself for seven days on the ship.  The tour was Bill Speidel's Underground Tour and it is well worth your time.  Pioneer Square was really the center of Seattle when it was founded,  a huge fire in 1889 took out about 25 square blocks of the city that was built of all wood of course.  The founders agreed that the rebuilding efforts needed to be of brick and stone. They also decided that because the city was built at sea level they needed to rise above.  So they built retaining walls 8 feet and higher on either side of the streets.  They filled in the space between the walls and paved new roads.  Business owners rebuilt the buildings at old sea level making them in effect basements. 

What you have are streets of tunnels a city beneath a city.

Creepy old bathroom from someone's home.

 

 

Store Front

Old Street level, notice how they are warped from years of flooding.

 

From one of the many bath houses.  This is how it worked.  A bath cost $.25 but you could be the second person in the bath for $.10, or the third person in the bath for $.05.  Yuck ! 

I can't imagine sharing bath water with anyone.

By now I'm somewhat tired, very warm and hoping our room is ready.  A shower and change of clothes would feel great.  We head back and YAY the room is ready.                   

Way too much space for two of us, but I'm not going to complain.  I grab a shower, wrap up in the nice comfy robe they provided, sit down with the glass of wine Dan had gone to the lobby bar to get for me and put my feet up.

Yes there was a tub too.  One of the more spacious bathrooms I have seen.

And now my ultimate favorite thing about hotels.  Room service.  I don't know why but I have always loved this.

Ahhhhh it's the little things that matter.

As night falls in Seattle I'm sad that our adventure is over.  I have made great memories, spent nine wonderful days with my husband, for the most part uninterrupted by work, taken awesome photos and relaxed.  But, I'm not sad for long because I'm secretly plotting my next voyage which hopefully will include Dan.  Question is what ship and what itinerary.  Or would it be an African Safari.........................