Gardyloo

Well of course different strokes and all that, but some personal suggestions would include the following. Google them. 1. Bainbridge ferry + Bloedel Reserve. The ferry ride to Bainbridge Island is very scenic, but once you get there a tour of the Bloedel Reserve on the north end of Bainbridge Island is very worthwhile. This is one of the premier botanical garden complexes in the US and is well worth investing a couple of hours. 2. West Seattle Water Taxi and shoreline walk. The West Seattle Water Taxi departs from the same pier complex as the ferries, but only crosses Elliott Bay to Seacrest Park in West Seattle (part of the city.) From the pier on that side, there's a 2-mile waterfront pedestrian/bike path around Duwamish Head to Alki ("al - kai") Beach with our own wee Statue of Liberty looking out to the passing ferries, the Olympic Mountains, and the beach vollyballers. There are numerous cafes and restaurants along the way, including the very fun Marination Ma Kai (Hawaiian/Korean fusion) right on the water taxi pier. You can rent bikes or kayaks at the pier, or there's a free shuttle bus. 3. Fishermen's Terminal. Fishermen's Terminal is located a couple of miles north of downtown, along the Lake Washington Ship Canal, across from the Ballard district. This is the homeport for much of the Puget Sound fishing fleet, and a big part of the Alaska fleet, including some of the Deadliest Catch boats when they're in town. You can get a good meal at the Bay Cafe or Chinook's restaurant overlooking the boats, then walk off the carbs along the piers and jetties, past the moving memorial to fishers lost at sea. This is an iconic "real Seattle" destination. 4. Ballard Locks. These locks, operated by the Corps of Engineers, allow boats to transfer from Lakes Union and Washington down to sea level on Puget Sound. There are lovely gardens on the Ballard side, and a fun fish ladder with underwater viewing windows on the Magnolia (south) side, through which you can see migrating salmon when they're about. The locks are about a mile's walk from Fishermen's Terminal. 5. Museum of Flight. Second only to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (IMO) and a terrific place to take kids if any are with you. Their parents, too. 6. University of Washington campus and Union Bay nature walks. The UW campus (reached by light rail from downtown) is quite lovely. Just east of Husky Stadium is a complex of wetlands and sloughs on the edge of Lake Washington. There's an elevated (part boardwalk) nature trail, or you can rent canoes from the UW Aquatic Center to paddle through the channels where you can see a lot of animal and birdlife. It's hard to imagine that you're in the middle of a big city. There are more...

I don't mean to sound like a curmudgeon but IMO the Pike Place Market is above all else a visual experience for visitors. Yes, there are tasty foods to nosh on, but if you come early and can stay a couple of hours, you can see quite a lot and experience many of the "highlights" of the market without having somebody curate the whole experience for you for fifty bucks or more. Come for breakfast, as early as you can. I'd suggest Lowell's, which opens at 8 AM. Get a window table and watch the ferries going back and forth across Elliott Bay, then after breakfast wander around the main and north arcades while the merchants are setting up for the day. Cross the street and do the ground level in the Sanitary Market and Triangle buildings, then if you want, re-cross the street and visit the lower levels in the main market. If you want to nibble, maybe try one of the long-standing vendors like the Mee Sum bakery (great hum bao rolls) or Piroshky, Piroshky, or a pastry from the Three Girls Bakery (been there for over a century.) I think for most people, a couple of hours, three max, is about the average limit. The Pike Place market is an institution, but, honestly, it's not THAT unique compared to other old-time markets around the country and world. The Grand Central Market and Farmers Market in Los Angeles are (IMO) just as colorful and historic as Pike Place, as is the Reading Market in Philly, Granville Island in Vancouver, or any number of markets around the world, including a couple in Dublin. The Pike Place Market offers terrific views of the waterfront from a few places, and IMO those add to whatever "uniqueness" is to be found, not just some artisan cheese vendor or some stall that throws salmon around (the same poor fish, all day long.) If you're heading to Pioneer Square later, why not take the light rail to the International District/Chinatown station and walk a block to Uwajimaya, Seattle's iconic pan-Asian (heavily Japanese) supermarket/department store. You want an unusual food/shopping experience? Play "name that vegetable" in the produce section, nosh in the food court that features stalls selling various Asian cuisines, buy some unusual Japanese snacks for the cruise, or visit the amazing Kinokuniya bookstore, a branch of Japan's biggest. You're on the Pacific Rim, after all, so see what's on offer. Just a suggestion, anyway.

I feel your pain. Web hosting services are notorious for sucking you in for cheap prices, then sticking it to you at renewal times. Is your domain (travelwithmitsugirly.com) registered with Wix also? If it were me, I'd find a free Wordpress theme template (thousands of them out there) and build a new Wordpress site using free or very low-cost extensions (like free photo galleries) then find a hosting service where you can park it. You don't have to use Wordpress for hosting; most competitive hosting services (GoDaddy, HostGator, Dotster, BlueHost, many others) will let you load Wordpress sites with minimum effort. Here's a site (many similar sites out there) highlighting some free Wordpress photo themes. 10+ Best Free Photography WordPress Themes 2023 - aThemes You can load a copy of Wordpress on to your home computer and develop the website offline, then upload it to a new hosting service quite easily. You'd then switch the nameservers (the actual address used by the web to locate your files) so that when someone types travelwithmitsugirly.com into their browser they get the new website rather than the old one. Here's a video (one of many) that might be helpful in showing how this is done. I recently had to migrate (move unchanged) from one hosting service to another when the old service wanted to increase my plan's annual fee by 300%. I moved to one of the above sites (GoDaddy in my case) where I got a 3-year plan for something like $100, or roughly $3/mo. My site (which is quite clunky and needs an update big time) has about 8 GB of files (lots of photos) and the migration took 48 hours. I could have (probably should have) developed a new Wordpress site and just uploaded it to the new host, but laziness won the day, as usual. FWIW, here's the site: Garde à l'eau! – Gardyloo's photos, notes and more It's really quite a simple process. Good luck!

Any supermarket.

Are you cruising the next day? How do you plan to get to the cruise terminal? In general I'd get a car, but depending on where you're staying going car-less is a possibility. Anyway, for one of the best breakfasts or brunches in SoCal, visit Martha's on 22nd Avenue in HB. Walk off the carbs along the Strand (beachfront pedestrian/bike path) steps from Martha's. You'll be thinking about which bank to rob so you can buy one of the houses facing the beach. Martha's Hermosa Beach - Breakfast, Brunch, Restaurant, Breakfast (marthashermosabeach.com) If you're feeling energetic, walking north along the Strand (from Martha's) will get you to the Manhattan Beach pier, something of an iconic location. Later, stroll down to Pier Avenue and hit one or more of the terrific cafes and/or bars along the pedestrianized street. The Lighthouse Cafe has been a major venue for jazz in the LA area for decades; it was used in the film La La Land a few years ago. The Lighthouse Cafe Map - https://goo.gl/maps/4aYXhcc9HLfHWMJg9

If you're sailing from Vancouver (which you should be on Inside Passage trips) maybe the night before, head to Richmond (suburb near the airport) for the Night Market, the biggest (mainly) Asian night market in North America.

You might want to consider visiting Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver, which is not only very beautiful, but also has a free suspension bridge that IMO is a fine substitute for the overpriced Capilano bridge. The rest of the park - trails, waterfalls, etc. - is quite grand.

I wanted to mention that you receive full frequent flyer mileage/points credit with RTW tickets (including premium cabin bonuses) and that it's quite easy to achieve elite status in most frequent flyer programs with one business class RTW trip. This leverages your investment further. When my wife and I were serial RTW customers (a few years ago before she passed) we would purchase a business class RTW in year 1 and use it for both international and domestic travel, racking up the miles in the process. Then during year 2 we'd spend those miles on premium travel (when possible) - overseas, domestic, whatever - then buy another RTW at the end of year 2 and use it for year 3 travel, rinse and repeat. Thus our roughly $5000 - $6000 investment in travel would generate around 20 premium-cabin flights over 2 years, for an average of $250 - $300 per flight. That's not bad for Seattle to Chicago, but it's pretty terrific for Los Angeles to Sydney or Cape Town to London. It's why I recommend that people develop a travel "master plan" - maybe 3 to 5 years out, so that you can stage your bucket list destinations in such a way that you optimize your travel investment. It's sort of like overlaying your bucket list with a calendar - turning a "what if" world into one with a timetable.

Well, this loops me back to a broken record that I'll inflict on you. (Flyertalker knows the shtick, so apologies.) Where else do you plan to travel in the year leading up to or following the SE Asia cruise? Cruises in the Caribbean or Scandinavia? Or the Mediterranean or Alaska or...? Because, with that much credit, you could purchase a round-the-world ticket that would allow up to 16 business class flights over a 12 month period. Without going into the details (of which there are many) it goes like this: You purchase the ticket through a member airline of one of the two alliances (Star Alliance and Oneworld) that offer these products. The ticket requires you to cross both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in the same direction, with no doubling back between continents (there are some exceptions) but you can zigzag and double back within a given continent, no problem. The Star Alliance RTW tickets are priced according to how many miles you fly; the main Oneworld product is priced according to how many continents you touch in the course of the 12-month lifespan of the ticket. A trip like yours would incude three continents - North America, Asia and Europe (in order to fulfill the requirement of crossing both oceans.) These tickets are priced very differently depending on where you begin and end the trip, not where you live. For example, a 3-continent business class ticket with Oneworld, with travel beginning and ending in Canada, carries a base price of CAD10,199. However, the same ticket beginning and ending in, say, Norway, carries a base price of CAD6766 (US$5054.) From Tokyo, the same ticket costs US$4939. (Taxes and fees will add typically 15% - 20% to those base prices, depending on specific airline fees and airport/departure taxes etc.) Now of course you'd need to get to the "origination" point on your own, but by starting someplace overseas, you could leverage the ticket's features in your favor. For example, say you fly to Oslo on your own dime before the Asian cruise. Land at OSL and check in at the gate for your first RTW flight (for which you already possess the e-ticket bought months ahead of time.) Fly from Norway to Thailand (via any number of connection points - Istanbul, Zurich, London, Doha...) and do the cruise. When you're done, fly (this time with tailwinds) back to North America - maybe Cathay Pacific suites via Hong Kong, or JAL via Tokyo, or via Singapore, wherever. But here's where the RTW comes into its own. You're allowed 16 flights, so treat home as a stopover, then weeks or months later (as long as it's less than 12 months from the first flight) use the same ticket to go someplace else, between home and Norway, where the loop ends. California? Alaska? Caribbean cruise? Or maybe you want to cruise in the Mediterranean or see some fjords, or visit Israel or Egypt or Morocco. Use the same ticket before it turns into a pumpkin back in Oslo. The five grand (US) that you've spent is good for two, or three, or even four separate trips, sending the cost-effectiveness through the roof. Here's an imaginary route beginning and ending in Norway that includes side trips to Alaska and Florida following your return from Asia, then (later) a return to Norway via London and Israel. It's just one of an infinity of possibilities. There are also scenarios that include Australia and New Zealand, South America or Africa, making for even greater per-flight savings than the basic RTW shown in the example. I'll close this now, but if this resonates, feel free to ask away.

I'm sort of curious. Does RSSC offer a "cruise only" option, and if so, what is the difference between that and the air-inclusive price? I'm not saying you could find a better deal, but it might give you a lot more flexibility.

I spent a lot of time on the Aleutian chain and western Alaska Peninsula, and one reason I suspect the cruise lines don't frequent the chain is the lack of "excursion" options that would appeal to a mass tourism market. This is an important profit center for the cruise lines, one that would be hard to replace in remote areas like the Aleutians, or most of western Alaska for that matter.

Yikes! You mean it's 2023 already? 😵

From the vault... A few from a transpacific crossing (Auckland - San Francisco) on a freighter... From the QM 2 departing NYC Indian Ocean sunrise from Plettenberg Bay, South Africa Cook Inlet, Alaska, from Anchorage - close to midnight in midsummer Sunset over the frozen Kuskokwim River, Bethel, Alaska Golden Gate Bridge at sunset

Well if it was me I'd fly from Newquay to Dublin, connecting to Aer Lingus' nonstop to Seattle. Note this year (not sure when you're traveling) that might entail an overnight in Dublin, owing to the arrival times of the daily flight from NQY and the departure time for the Seattle flight (too close together) but that might change by next year. You'd likely have to spend a night near Heathrow, anyway, if you flew to North America from there. One benefit of flying out of Dublin is that you pre-clear US border controls (immigration and customs) at DUB, so when you arrive in the US it's like you're on a domestic flight. You could spend the night in Seattle, or connect on Alaska Airlines (an Aer Lingus and BA partner) up to Anchorage or Fairbanks right away. Your bags would be checked through; you'd just go to the departing gate at SEA and off you go. Mind you, that's a long day of travel, but it's a long way. Coming back, I'd probably do something similar in reverse, Vancouver > Seattle > Dublin > Newquay. Not sure on the timing, but probably it would involve another night in Dublin owing to the connection details for DUB-NQY. Still, you'd avoid Heathrow, which in the peak season would be worth something to me.

The "downtown" Hampton Inn isn't. It's a schlep along trafficky streets to most anywhere, and there are relatively few restaurants or other amenities close by.

So first, IMO it's way too early to be booking flights for January. Too many things can happen - spikes or dips in fuel prices, labor unrest, major schedule alterations... Flights aren't going to sell out, and while you're talking about peak periods, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if business class prices fall. I'd start shopping seriously sometime around June or July. Second, there aren't a lot of premium economy seats on those routes - just regular economy and business class. If you look at the flight details on ITA searches, you'll see that they're often a mixture of PE (on a few flights) and business class fare buckets. Third, there are work-arounds if you're prepared to be a little flexible on dates (of course while respecting your cruise dates.) For example, a round trip from DFW to Lima, Peru (LIM) in business class on United (via Houston) departing on January 4 and returning on January 30 comes in at $2201 per person. A business class one-way ticket on the 5th from LIM to Santiago is US$330, and a one-way (in PE this time) from Buenos Aires to Lima on January 29 is $426, so all in $2957. You might need an airport hotel near LIM for one or two nights, but you'd end up money ahead compared to the current prices. Just a couple of suggestions.

Yes, the Marriott is just across the street from the Pier 66 terminal.

There are two cruise terminals in Seattle. What cruise line are you using and when will this happen?

A few years ago someone hacked my American Airlines frequent flyer account and stole over 300,000 miles, which they sold to Skylux. Skylux then used the miles to "sell" several premium class tickets to dupes who thought they were getting a bargain. (Specifically, they sold business class seats on Cathay Pacific from Toronto to Hong Kong and v.v. and one for Cathay Pacific one way from Hong Kong to LAX.) When I reported the theft to American Airlines, they voided the tickets that had been "sold" by Skylux. Apparently one of the tickets (Toronto to Hong Kong) had been used, but the return was voided. The AA agent told me (breaking the rules by doing so, but thanks) that the Hong Kong > LAX passenger learned the ticket had been canceled upon checking in at HKG for the flight, literally the last minute. I eventually had my miles restored. Whether the people who'd "bought" them - for thousands of dollars - from Skylux ever got their money back, who knows? Just FYI, but a good place to look for legitimate "cheap" premium fares is the "Premium Fare Deals" board on Flyertalk - https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/premium-fare-deals-740/ . The wonks at FT are very good at sleuthing out good prices for the pointy end. Brush up on your airline and airport codes before diving in.

Walkable in around 10 minutes. Uphill going, downhill returning. Map - https://goo.gl/maps/93pGABmNGfZGa8sY7

As this sounds like a repositioning cruise, will it be sometime in April? If so, I wouldn't worry too much about crowds at the Pike Place market; on the other hand you might want to have some alternatives in mind in case the weather is Vancouver-like. 😉 Have you visited the Museum of Flight? It's well worth your time. Or you could take a cab or Uber up to Fishermen's Terminal, home port for a lot of the Puget Sound fishing fleet, and a big part of the Alaska fleet too (much of it moored and likely in financial distress because of the closures of the crab fisheries in the Bering Sea.) There are a couple of excellent restaurants/cafes at the terminal, and you can walk off the carbs along the piers and floats past the ships. Maybe lend a hand with some net repairs. If the weather's okay and you're feeling energized, there's a walking route from Pier 91 to the central waterfront that's quite enjoyable - maybe an hour's level stroll.

Actually, according to ITA, YVR-xSFO-PPT and return on the same United planes is coming in at US$4482 for most days in January '24, so $900 less than originating in SFO. It COULD be done, but some technicalities of RTW tickets would really get in the way. The main problem is that the trip has to end in the same country where it started, and since starting in North America is generally a lot more expensive than starting someplace in Europe or Asia, you'd be in trouble because after the transatlantic cruise you'd be in South America, far from either. And because you can't cross oceans twice and have to cross both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in the same direction, you'd likely be forced to buy a commercial ticket one-way in order to "resume" the RTW in, say, South Africa, where you broke it off in order to cruise to Brazil. Now that's doable, but when you add the cost of the "non-RTW" tickets to the RTW itself, chances are that the total will be higher, potentially a lot higher, than just buying ordinary tickets in the first place. For example, using January 2024 prices (2025 won't be available for another year) two one-way tickets, Vancouver - Cape Town (Turkish) and Rio - Vancouver (Air Canada or Delta) both in business class come to a total of around $4000. Add that to $4500 (above) for Vancouver - Tahiti and return, and you're less than US$9K for both trips. Not cheap, but less than the cost of two separate RTWs. Hope I haven't lost you in this. It's all in the numbers. In general, the most cost-effective business class RTWs are structured like this, if you want to leverage a couple (or three or more) trips out of the same ticket. 1. Start someplace overseas where the RTW price is good AND it's someplace you can access affordably in order to start the RTW there and get home after it's over. Make sure the cost of the RTW ticket PLUS the "positioning" costs are less than just starting at home. 2. Get to the "start point" and travel around a bit before actually starting the RTW. 3. Use the RTW to get to someplace on your wish list - maybe more than one - then use it to fly home. Home in this case is a "stopover" in the RTW. 4. Use the RTW to travel around your home country or continent, consistent with the rules governing the RTW. 5. Then use it to cross the next ocean and visit one or more additional countries on your wish list. 6. End up back in the country where you started. 7. If you want, use some of the many thousands of frequent flyer miles you've acquired to fly home. This is why I recommend having a multi-year travel plan, or something of a bucket list to which you've applied a calendar. What if, on your list, there was a cruise in SE Asia or around the Indian Ocean that you could swap for the Cape Town - Rio one (just a delay, not dropping it?) Maybe that would work with an RTW that includes the Tahiti trip while avoiding expensive one-way or backtracking tickets in order to satisfy the RTW rules. Put on your thinking caps, pull out a map of the world, and go crazy. I know, all potentially confusing and leading to brain pain, but also kinda fun, isn't it?

And if it's Memorial Day weekend, you'll also have to deal with (potentially) big crowds at Seattle Center (Space Needle, Chihuly, MoPop etc.) due to the annual Folklife Festival, which can draw upwards of a quarter million people over the long weekend. Honestly, what I'd do would be to head to the airport when you disembark, store your luggage at the left luggage facility (if you can't check it in or haven't used Port Valet) and then plot your plans from there. Some could ride the light rail back to downtown, some could buy a day pass for a lounge at the airport, some could think about renting a car for a few hours and head out into the countryside... many options. Note that the Pike Place market is insanely crowded on weekends during cruise season, starting at around 10 AM. Not fun.

There are several. Here are some at sea level in case the mountains are socked in, which is always a possibility. As with Mount Rainier, these are best done on weekdays in order to avoid congestion at choke points like the park entrance at Mt. Rainier or ferry terminals for the routes that use them. Google the places on these maps. 1. Whidbey loop: https://goo.gl/maps/uoUnJBfesgdTcUjRA This includes four very picturesque waterfront towns (La Conner, Coupeville, Langley and Mukilteo) as well as stunning Deception Pass (the narrow gap between Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands - amazing at tide change) and fascinating Fort Casey, with its lighthouse, hiking trails an cool coastal defense gun batteries. On the way back to Seattle you'd pass the Boeing Everett assembly plant, home of the big jets and the biggest building in the world. 2. Kitsap/Bainbridge loop: https://goo.gl/maps/SyH7e7YgP28TnX7Q8 This includes a nice ferry ride from Edmonds, an attractive Seattle suburb, over to the Kitsap Peninsula, followed by visits to Port Gamble, a very pretty Victorian-era waterfront village, Poulsbo, fiercely proud of its Norwegian heritage, and a stop in the Native American village of Suquamish, site of Chief Seattle's grave, the city's namesake. You'd then travel to Bainbridge Island (by bridge) and if time permits visit the Bloedel Reserve, one of the finest botanical garden complexes in the US. The trip concludes with a stop for a meal or adult beverage (😉) at Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island followed by the incredibly scenic ferry ride back to downtown Seattle. 3. Tacoma/Vashon loop: https://goo.gl/maps/3vsx2c5nQX3XBpLh7 This includes a couple of excellent destinations in downtown Tacoma, Chihuly's Bridge of Glass at the Museum of Glass, and the Le May car museum, one of the country's biggest. It then includes Tacoma's Old Town en route to the short ferry ride to the south end of Vashon Island. Vashon is a large and quite rural island, with a pretty village in Burton and fabulous views from the Point Robinson lighthouse. (It the "mountain is out," this is a superb place to view Mount Rainier.) The route then crosses back to the mainland in West Seattle, then loops past Alki Beach (with our own wee Statue of Liberty) and to the very enjoyable Marination Ma Kai cafe on the water taxi pier at Seacrest Park (Hawaiian/Korean food, great drinks from the patio with the best view of Seattle there is.) 4. Snoqualmie Valley, Snoqualmie Falls and Twin Peaks: https://goo.gl/maps/amFxEc4qgbT2c7Yu5 This starts with the old town of Snohomish, home to numerous antique stores, then travels south through the beautiful Snoqualmie Valley to the home of Carnation Farms. The valley in July might offer some fruit stands with berries or other produce; a stop at Remlinger Farms in Carnation is always enjoyable. The next stop is Snoqualmie Falls, which in July should still be very impressive with snow melt from the mountains. Between the falls and "downtown" Snoqualmie you'll see an impressive collection of old railway cars and locomotives, then down the road in North Bend you can have a piece of cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee at Twede's, made famous in the Twin Peaks TV series. If you're still hungry and can tolerate sensory overload, a stop at the Triple XXX drive-in in Issaquah will fill your bellies and eyeballs, and how. So these are a few possible day trips for you to consider. These are pretty weather-proof for the most part, and any of them will show you a face of our watery region that many visitors miss. Highly recommended.

Like a number of big cities, Seattle has a major problem with homelessness, but the vast majority of homeless people one might encounter on the streets are nonviolent. If their presence offends you, then maybe visiting big cities isn't your thing. Now obviously it's not recommended to walk around downtown at 2 in the morning with $50 bills hanging out of your pockets, but there are few places in the world where it WOULD be a good idea. But millions of people visit Seattle annually and almost none of them ever encounter criminal behavior. If you use common sense you'll be fine.