For Martincath , a thanks

[Gsel]

We would like to thank you for your great advice. Aerocar was right on the spot! Our flight into yvr  was over an hour late but they met us with a beautiful Tesla and had us in town in no time. We were at the port at 11am as you suggested and were having lunch on the ship at noon with barely a stop.  It could not have been smoother.

Thanks so much!

[Langley Cruisers]

Hear hear!! Appreciation for this wonderful member and the courteous, wise,  and accurate information given on these boards! 👌

[ell52]

As a both a local and longtime CC member, I concur. MartinC is always courteous, detailed, and has lovely sense of humour (that’s sometimes lost in an online post). MC you make things easy for the rest of the locals here!  🙂

[martincath]

I'll have to disagree with my own cheerleaders as to always being courteous, but I'm trying to default to non-snarky mode these days 😉

 

Glad it worked out for you Gsel, hope the rest of the cruise goes even better than embarkation, and thanks to all for the love-fest.

 

I'm actually just about to come home after a week back in Blighty for a wedding so I should be back to normal CC activity levels by Thursday. There's a couple of hours to kill until the Bakeoff premiere (I don't know why I'm looking forward to watching it 'live' for the first time quite so much, but I totes am!) so I'll have a quick check for any unanswered questions before going offline again!

[ell52]

On 8/27/2019 at 10:29 AM, martincath said:

I'll have to disagree with my own cheerleaders as to always being courteous, but I'm trying to default to non-snarky mode these days 😉

 

Ha! Here I thought it was just your quirky Brit humour.  😉 

[Jldevlin]

I live here and quite often think ...hey !!! I did not know that !!!   So helpful to have you on this board 

[willsaway]

We're from Oz and travelled to Seattle and Vancouver for a cruise in 2018.   Martincath's advice was invaluable, and I did thank him at the time.  Find ourselves in the position of travelling there again in 2020, this time for an Alaskan cruise, and a Radiance cruise to Japan.  Thinking of flying into San Francisco (bit of a scary thought but Qantas flies there direct next year) and taking the Antrak train to Seattle/Vancouver so I will be trawling for all of Martincath's advice in this area.  Cheers, and very pleased to see him still posting and giving such great info.

[martincath]

9 hours ago, willsaway said:

...Thinking of flying into San Francisco (bit of a scary thought but Qantas flies there direct next year) and taking the Antrak train to Seattle/Vancouver so I will be trawling for all of Martincath's advice in this area.  ...

You're welcome; if you can't find the info you want in prior posts feel free to ask again; and some unsolicited advice right off the bat for this trip - don't forget to schedule time in Portland! It's a good place to transfer trains on the way up from SF (Coast Starlight does go all the way to Seattle, but only the Cascades actually crosses the border so you will have to use both - you could swap between them in Eugene or pretty much any station further north).

 

Depending what your tastes run to on land Oregon offers a wonderful coastline, mountains, one of the tallest waterfalls around, and even desert if you head east - but you would really need a rental car as transit options are very limited everywhere except Portland and surrounding commuter towns. Portland itself is the best beer city on the planet and with their very efficient transit you can booze it up with no problem getting home safe; outstanding food scene; the best airport in the USA every year there's been awards given (so if time starts getting tight you can fly SFO-PDX, often for less than it costs to ride Amtrak, and start the train part from there) and just a delightfully quirky vibe. Go watch Portlandia on Netflix - while it's definitely exaggerated the core of the sketch concepts are absolutely bang on. Most places, seeing Darth Vader ride by on a unicycle playing bagpipes would involve buying a ticket to some kind of variety show - in Portland it's so common that only tourists get their phones out for him! 😉

[Gsel]

I agree! As a former flight attendant PDX is a great airport to waste plenty of time and money.  Oregon and Portland are also worth a stop if possible.