This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Vacation Recap 2018, Part 5
Sep
5
2018
Continued from last week
Day 8
This was a day of more travel. We started out with a good breakfast at the hotel. Then we had to pack and make sure we got everything. Then it was the 6 of us with all our luggage off to the street behind the hotel to catch the bus to downtown. Our first destination was the train station.
We got there without too much of a problem. But then things got interesting. I had read online that the Amtrak station will hold bags for passengers going out later that day – a nice service considering there are many people without cars and nowhere to keep their bags while sightseeing. The internet said it was a free service. So when we packed our bags that morning, we didn’t pay too much attention to what was going in which bag.
When I asked however, the lady told us it was $10 per bag. And sure enough, there was a sign posted in the lobby that said as much. We were not going to pay $120 for our bags to sit in storage for 5 hours. “But,” she continued, seeing the looks of disappointed on our faces, “you can check some bags now onto the train. You won’t see them until your destination.” We quickly conferred and agreed that the 6 largest bags could be checked, since those were mostly clothes, and then we could carry the 6 smaller bags around our sightseeing for the day.
We gave the lady our 6 large bags and before she was done processing all those, she kindly offered us a loophole. I don’t know what all their policies are, but she knew of one that let her store our remaining bags for free. We didn’t ask too many questions, and thus we set off on our sightseeing. My recommendation on this is to call the Amtrak station before expecting to be able to leave your bags there.
So then we of course made our way to the bus stop, because that’s a good way to get around Seattle. In this case, it was about a half an hour to get from King St to the Boeing Museum of Flight. It dropped us off right in front of the main entrance, quite convenient.
We did not have to buy tickets because we were members of another science center, just like at the Seattle, I mean, Pacific Science Center. So we saved about $100. The BMOF is said to be the largest private airplane museum in the USA.
Anything that has an SR-71 is okay in my book.
And they had military section. Not quite as extensive as the USAF museum in Dayton, OH, but still enough so that the kids could learn something about what brought their mother to the US.
Then we took a break for lunch. The food wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t outrageous and it was plentiful.
After lunch was a trip to the gift shop and then we still had some time to kill before the bus, so we browsed through the original Boeing factory. The factory started in a large red barn, and it had since fallen into neglect and disrepair. Some years ago the museum brought it to this location and restored it, and it was interesting to see the old equipment and techniques for making airplanes.
Not wanting to miss the bus, we made our way to the bus stop about 15-20 minutes before the scheduled arrival. It seemed like it was about 30 minutes before the bus actually came, but that was still plenty of time before the train so it was no problem.
Here is what the train station looked like on the inside.
The boarding procedure wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t great either. Amtrak just counted on the passengers being able to form a decent line on their own, which we did. The sleeping-car passengers got to board first, then people travelling in group, then everyone else. Since we were a party of 6, we got to skip ahead of some people.
They told us our train car number, but once inside it was a free-for-all. We didn’t know whether we wanted top or bottom, but the loud party guy who boarded right behind us indicated he would be having lots of fun on the bottom level, so that made our decision much easier.
We headed to the upper section, where we found some seats were marked with “Reserved for 2” and others marked with “Reserved for group”. We were not told they had saved seats for us, but there were 6 group seats and we were the only group of 6 that we could see, so we took those.
About the first thing we did was to start eating our snack-dinner that we brought. We actually bought this in Seattle at a pharmacy nearby the King Street station. The options are rather limited there, so although we wanted some carry-out from a restaurant, we made do with granola bars and Snapple.
Then the conductor came by and remarked that he was glad we found the seats they saved for us. The upper section of our train car was only about 1/3 full, so even if we hadn’t taken those seats there were plenty of others to choose.
The views out the window were great – the sound for the first hour or so of the trip as you can see in the previous photo, then forests and rivers and then apple orchards and mountains.
The train cars had outlets at every seat, and there was much leg room and a fairly generous recline angle for the seats. After making the kids go potty and brush their teeth in the bathrooms (downstairs, but not a problem), we tried to sleep. Alpha and Beta were seated together, but with the extra seats available, they split up so as to each have more room. Gamma was next to me and he went to sleep without much problem. Delta never did get comfortable, and he wiggled and repositioned himself all night, much to the dismay of Some Wife who was seated next to him and was prevented from sleeping much by his restlessness.
Plus it was really cold on the train. I appreciated the air conditioning during the daytime part of the trip, but at night it made one want a blanket. Maybe they do that do drive blanket sales? But we all got at least some sleep.
Then it was evening, and morning the next day.
To Be Continued…
One of your men puts to flight a thousand, for the Lord your God is He who fights for you, just as He promised you.
Joshua 23:10
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:34 am and has been carefully placed in the Travel category.
