My original plan was to catch an organized shuttle bus to Pike’s Place Market ~0900 with a return ~1300. All of that was derailed by US Customs/Immigration proceedings this morning. Those who had a ship’s tour obviously were rapidly accommodated. For the rest of us? Some bright bulb decided to process people alphabetically by muster stations. Seriously, muster stations. Did I mention that my muster station is U1? Those with US Passports were directed toward the 5th Deck Dining Room. Anyone not US had to meet in the theater then be escorted into the terminal for processing. BTW – HAL’s Westerdam was also in port on a turnover day with a passenger count of just shy of 2k. The Radiance’s max is ~2400. Then you have to add in the time to process documents on all the crew.
Upshot of all of this is that I went to check on the line right before 0800. It didn’t look that bad and no one was checking to see if you actually belonged in the line. So I decided to be evil considering that at the rate things were going (one hour – 5% of muster stations done…) and got in line so that I might be able to get off the ship today.
It took a full hour since originally there were only two Immigration officers with a third arriving around 0830. They scanned the passport, then used their handheld device to take a picture to compare to their file. And were friendly and chatted which also slowed things down. But I met a lovely couple who actually live in Oakland. And Antoinette has fig trees and has lots of extra figs if I want to pick them… yum.
There is a lovely path along the bay called – The Bayview Trail – which runs from well beyond Pier 91 to Downtown Seattle. It might go further, I didn’t check. It is paved and pretty obvious on Google Maps. At this point, I had no clue as to the status of the shuttle bus so decided to just walk the 2.6 miles into town. Well, there was no signage leaving the port area. Go out and past the large grey cannery building…. right. I did that but some how decided to take the stairs up onto the overpass bridge. 3/4th of the way across the bridge I realized my mistake since the path was now visible. Oh, well – I decided to see if I could access further toward town. Cutting across 8 railroad tracks and jumping two fences just wasn’t going to happen.
I honestly had only two goals – postcards and Seattle/Washington State thermoses from Starbucks. Just for a lark I looked for the closest Starbucks which turned out to only be about three traffic lights down the main road toward downtown. Lovely staff there, good pumpkin lattes AND
they had both. The staff there said that they get a shipment of beverage containers every week and rarely sell any. Did I want more? Please – buy more! This success meant that I really didn’t need to go hunt around downtown. Serendipity occasionally works!
Turning around, I headed back toward the ship taking the same route back up the bridge. As I headed towards the stairs I ran into a number of confused looking individuals.
Were they looking for the Bayview Trail? Yes. I pointed down toward the lefthand gate, That way – not this way. Going back down the stairs, the group was up to about 15 as we headed across the parking lot toward one of the vehicle entrances.
I did mention Pier 91, right? Off the end of everywhere?
you can see the end of the bridge, the railroad area, and the Canada Geese who apparently believed that they had the right of way..
I hiked about 1.5 km down the path before I decided that more distance wasn’t going improve my view of Mt Rainier.
so decided to just look at downtown from the ship.
in non-cruise hobbies, it is now Oct and a couple of my stitch-alongs have released new segments. Lets me stitch on something other than the sheep. Cleo is the current Barbara Ana SAL – the cat on down was stitched today.
Tomorrow is Astoria, Oregon then we have a sea day prior to San Pedro & Santa Barbara.
