Cruise and Land Tour Review-from Seattle to Fairbanks

Hi everyone!

This review is a bit late but I still wanted to share it as a thank you to everyone who gave me advice and help planning this amazing vacation.

This past August my husband and I flew to Seattle, WA for two short days in the Emerald City, took Amtrak to Vancouver, embarked upon the Sapphire Princess, sailed the coast to Whittier, boarded a bus for a two night stay in Denali, and then took the railroad to Fairbanks where we stayed for 4 nights before flying back home. In all, we stayed in 5 hotel rooms and one cabin.

Some background information on me before we get into the review: I'm a high school teacher and we just went back to school 9/2. That means that I may be a bit slow to write this review. Second, while I am an educator, I'm a math teacher. My writing skills have improved a bit since high school but I apologize in advance for stumbling prose or incorrect grammar. Third, I like to plan by nature but for this trip I really went over the top. If you want any more information about any of things we chose to do (or why we chose them over something else) I can give you that to you.

When we were planning this vacation April 2013, I quickly realized that from the NYC area, we actually could save money by flying to Seattle and taking the train to Vancouver than by just flying to Vancouver. Add to this a desire to spend time in Seattle and I was sold. My husband needed a few minutes of convincing but gave in and booked our flight on United to Seattle. We took an evening flight that was scheduled to arrive in Seattle at 10pm (1am our time). There was some debate of how early to go, but we finally settled for 3 days before our cruise and decided to spend two nights in Seattle and then take the late train to Vancouver where we would stay for one night before boarding the Sapphire.

Our flight left from Newark Airport 45 minutes late due to customs being on board late. :confused: Luckily this was not a bad omen for the vacation to come. We boarded the flight hungry and slightly frazzled. United doesn't serve dinner on their flights but do make it available for purchase. We bought a box of Tapas (Marinated Olives | Roasted Red Pepper Bruschetta Spread | Wild Garden® Hummus | Rondelé® Peppercorn Parmesan Cheese Spread | Crackers | Emerald® Natural Almonds and Chocolate-Covered Fruit), a Roast Beef and Cheddar Baguette, and a Asian-style noodle salad. Everything was really tasty and reasonably priced considering we were a captive market. The flight passed quickly thanks to a very good book and soon we were making our final approaches to Seattle.

It was about 10 minutes before the call to turn off all electronics when I managed to spot Mt Rainier out my window. I had really wanted to see Mt Rainier on this trip and was really scared that it may be too cloudy to see it while on the ground. I grabbed a few pictures with my camera phone and begged my husband to dig my dslr out of our carry-on (my point and shoot's battery had died an hour earlier).

Sorry for the photo quality. My window had a LOT of frost on it and I wasn't using a very fast lens. The photos will get a bit better as we go on.

We landed only a few minutes off schedule and quickly disembarked. Sea-Tac is really well-planned out and we found the baggage claim area quickly. After grabbing our bags, we headed out to wait for the shuttle to our hotel of choice (the Holiday Inn at Sea-Tac). The shuttle showed up after about 15 minutes and away we went.

Our Hotel:

The room:

There was some construction going on at the hotel and areas of it looked really run down. The elevators looked ancient and beat up. Our room was beautiful inside and the bathroom seemed to be brand new.

We chose to stay at Sea-Tac to save a little bit of money. The hotels at Sea-Tac were about 25% cheaper than downtown.

That concludes the first day of this vacation. I'll be back tomorrow to tell you about our first full day in Seattle featuring:

Pike Place Market

Seattle Ferry

Monorail

Space Needle

Hello from a fellow math teacher...newly retired! I am looking forward to this review because we hope to do a very similar-type trip...only most likely in reverse. Thanks for taking time to put the review together. Hopefully there won't be too many algebra tests to grade right away so you have more time to write!

The plan for the first day in Seattle was to get up at 6am, get on the light rail, and have breakfast at Lowell's in Pike Market when it opened at 7am. Sadly, the long flight had other things to say about that and we were on our way around 10 am. We never made it to Lowell's so will have to make that a priority on the next trip.

The light rail is a very efficient means of traveling between Sea-Tac and downtown Seattle. We rode the entire route to Westlake Plaza. Westlake was then only a few blocks from Pike Place Market. Westlake Plaza's stop is beautiful and clean and has both stairs and escalators. The one thing we found most interesting about the light rail in Seattle is that buses also drive through the tunnels over the same routes/tracks. :eek: It looked very complicated!

Inside the Train:

Light Rail I took later in the trip:

Westlake Plaza Station:

Light Rail Station with Bus in it:

Having made the light rail trip successfully we walked down to Pike Place Market hoping that the legendary food would live up to its reputation.

(Pay attention to the sky, it changes later)

Our first stop was Beechers Cheese to see how the cheese was made and try the legendary Mac and Cheese. Mac and Cheese is my husband's favorite food, so we made sure to order a 16 oz serving to share. In hindsight, I think 8 oz would have been just fine. I thought the flavor was ok, nothing special. DH enjoyed it so there's that. Beechers lets you sample their cheese and have a few out for tasting. TIP: They will let you sample anything in their case if you ask. We sampled the smoked flagship and liked it better than the original. We purchased a half pound to snack on later in the trip.

Cheese making

The counter

The Mac and Cheese

After we finished our Mac and Cheese, we made our way into the Market. The flowers were beautiful, if we didn't have to cross the border for our cruise I definitely would have picked up a bouquet.

We also walked past the amazing pacific seafood

You read lots of reports on here that Pike Place Market get's really crowded in the afternoon and those reports were not exaggerated! :eek:

I found this sign particularly funny

Our next stop was the Market Grill where we ordered the highly recommended "Grilled Salmon Sandwich, blackened, with extra Rosemary Mayo". Now, for background information: I HATE salmon. It's way too fishy for me. Apparently whatever salmon we get here on the East coast is terrible because this sandwich was simply amazing. I couldn't get over how fresh and light it was! I loved the rosemary with fish as well. I actually recreated this dish the day we finally got home from this adventure. (Using wild Alaskan Salmon, of course :D)

Right down the market from the Grill is another famous sign that I was looking forward to photographing:

We were then drawn in by a huge crowd of people and workers that were chanting various offers. That's right we found the famous fish throwers! This is definitely something that needs to be seen to be understood. I did get a video but I haven't downloaded those yet so for now, here's a photo:

hmmm, no idea why that last photo is so big :confused: sorry!

I'm enjoying all your pictures and info so far. Looking forward to more!

I keep checking back...hoping you will finish your review? :confused:

Wish you'd finish your great review. I really enjoyed the photos of the Westlake station and I didn't realize the buses were there too. Please come back :D