Seattle and Vancouver–Sunday

Up reasonably early this morning so we could take our time with our last breakfast on board. The cruise experience was good. It was great not having to pack and unpack or organise meals. We did eat too much, the food was just too good not to try a good range. Disembarkation was quite efficient and in less than an hour we were off the boat, out of the taxi and in Pike Place market, a very busy and popular tourist attraction as well as a big food market for the locals. We had all our bags with us, we took a gamble that we could find somewhere to leave them, otherwise we’d just drag them along behind us. We were catching the bus (we thought train) from Seattle to Vancouver and had to be at the station by 12:30, so didn’t have much time to do anything with bags. Just beside the market is a small hostel and they were happy to hold our bags for a few hours for only $1 per bag. Great start. Even more useful, one of the hostel staff recommended a coffee shop in the market, bit hard to find – up a couple of flights of stairs and round a couple of corners. Before we could see the coffee shop we could smell it, smelt amazing. The coffee was by far the best we’ve had since leaving home and rivalled most of Melbourne’s coffee.

After coffee, we walked through the market. We had read about fish throwing, but to actually see it was spectacular. It starts with one of the stall holders, standing outside the stall beside some big fish, calling out. The rest of the staff at the stall then replied in unison and the big fish flew from one end of the stall to the other, it was hilarious. We’ve uploaded the short video that we took to Youtube and hopefully here is the link. https://youtu.be/jMLV_UnWcXM. We watched a couple of “fish throws”. The second one was funnier because the receiver dropped the fish, much to the amusement of the onlookers, then threw the fish back and the fish was thrown back again.

We collected our bags and walked through Seattle to the station to catch the bus to Vancouver. We’d forgotten what it is like going through land border controls. Everyone on the bus had to get off, collect bags and be “interviewed”. All OK and back on the bus again and arrived in Vancouver around 6 pm. We went to visit the Vancouver lookout, something similar to the Seattle Space Needle, but not as good. Vancouver has many very tall buildings and the views weren’t as spectacular.

We went to Gastown, just near the lookout, for a great Peruvian meal, along with some of the local Peruvians, and watched part of the soccer match between Peru and Brazil. The Peruvians scored first, and there was a very jubliant outburst in the restaurant.

Back to the hotel for an early pick up to be taken to the Rocky Mountaineer.