Alaska Vacation Part Six--Seattle and Victoria

I'm glad I didn't panic and cancel my ferry ride to Seattle. Everything worked out and I had a nice time. The city is very much like San Francisco, lots of hills. I thought it would be an easy walk from the port to my hotel, but it was a cardio workout of a climb. I had a reservation at an inexpensive hotel next to a hospital, so my view was of sick people, lying in their beds. I took a bus tour which gave me an overview--the only thing I knew about it was that TV show from the 1960s called Here Come the Brides and the theme song---"The bluest skies you ever seen in Seattle/Like a beautiful child/Growing up free and wild." And I would run around and act like a savage and say, "I'm the beautiful child in Seattle." Anyway, it's a nice, charming city where everyone drinks coffee all the time. I saw the original Starbucks and the famous space needle--immortalized in the famous issue of Adventure where the Legion of Super-Heroes visits an anti-gravity restaurant on Jupiter, which is modeled on the space needle. (This was the one where Superboy, Ultra Boy, Chameleon Boy and new Legionnaires Chemical King and Timber Wolf disguise themselves as super-outlaws to infiltrate a school of villains.) Next to the space needle is a museum specializing in science fiction and rock music. They had an exhibits on Battlestar Galactica and Avatar as well as the futuristic car Harrison Ford drove in Blade Runner. (pictured)

Then I had a great seafood dinner on the wharf, walked through the Market Square and went back to the hospital-hotel. Then next morning I got up early to take the ferry back to Victoria where I would have about 90 minutes before I had to get on the bus to Nanaimo where Jerry was having his conference. I had rushed through Victoria at the other end in order make the ferry to Seattle, so now it was nice to have some time there. It had a pretty harbor and some quaint shops.

I got back to the hotel in Nanaimo and watched some episodes of Horders and decided to clean up once I got home. The next day was our last on vacation before flying home. We wandered around Nanaimo which was having a car show and I bought some old sci-fi novels at a used book store. Will Kindle eliminate those stores? I still love getting old books for a dollar and reading cheesey s-f.

Rather than taking a ferry all the way back to Tswassen and then a long cab ride to the airport in Vancouver, we took a tiny float plane and stayed in an airport hotel since we had to get up quite early for our flight. That was fun. (pictured) But the trip from Vancouver was a pain. We were supposed to take a small plane to Seattle and transfer to NY. But our plane had a mechanical problem and we had to get a new one which meant missing our connection. We had several problem booking a new flight and worred we'd have to stay in Seattle, but it worked out and I watched Design Star on the TV in the set in front of me while drinking wine from tiny bottles.