CHESSNOID

We drove to the airport and I chose to do the park and ride deal with our car because the last trip I took via cab couldn’t locate my home and always caused us to miss our train. Thank goodness for the metro link that saved us the last trip. The other reason is the cost of the taxi was more than the park and ride fee including the gas costs (even at $4 a gallon)

We took a jet plane to Seattle and arrived 3 hours later. I was always hesitant to fly again because of the high regulation of the airlines. You know take off your shoes, your jacket, inspect all your baggage and empty all your pockets. To be honest with you, it’s all a waste of time. It doesn’t make it any safer. Even the whole inspection process is poorly done. It really is just a waste of time and money. You can’t convince me otherwise.

The jet plane we took was very small. The stewardess was very pleasant. The jet seated only 60 passengers. We did run into 110 mph winds up there that you could feel as turbulence, but the pilot warned us about this before we left the ground. Even though this ride was short I got sleepy. I really loved the views from the windows. I felt like I was in a satellite because we were so high up. It’s funny when we were up there it didn’t seem like we were going very fast. When we took the train to Seattle last year, it took us over a day to get there. About 30-35 hours with all the delays,

After we got to the airport, it took us awhile to get out. You had to go across the terminal to get a taxi. When we got to our hotel, the rooms were not ready. The front desk girl said to come back at 3pm but check in wasn’t guaranteed until 4pm. We ate at the restaurant next door called the Red Fin. They were about to close for lunch but they allowed us in. We got the lunch special called Ben to boxes. They were actually plenty of food. I thought they would be light meal lunches. Instead, they had unique sushi that had pineapple and cilantro in it. I know that sounds weird but it was quite delicious. There was also some sautéed Shrimp in peanut sauce. The mi so soup was good and had chopped shitake mushrooms and tofu in it but it was just warm. The meal was just overall yummy.

We went back to the hotel next door but it still wasn’t ready. We decided to walk to the mall nearby and hang out at the local Barnes and noble. There we were able to catch up on our magazine reading. I saw some interesting magazines that I didn’t know existed. One was just about smart phones and pdas. Very cool.

When we got back to the hotel at 4:30, the front desk gentleman was very pleasant and noticed we would be in town for a week. He offered to upgrade the room and give us a free comp. That was either very generous or basically all the queen size bedrooms were sold out.

Up in the hotel room, my wife took pictures. It was very small even though it was the king size bedroom. That was actually expected so it wasn’t a big deal. He gave us a corner room on the 9th floor and it had nice views of the city. Across the hotel was a commercial building where we could see people working their day jobs. It was funny because the buildings in downtown are very close. I took a lot of pictures of our views. I really love the city, the city noise, and all the hustle and bustle in it.

When it was time to go to sleep, I swear to you this hotel has the best bed and pillows in any hotel I have ever stayed at. They even have a pillow menu if you want to change your pillows out. Needless to say, I fell asleep in about 2 seconds. It was a very wonderful and peaceful sleep away from home.