|
Honeymoon: The Beginning We had to get up at 3:00 AM on the 13th for our 6:00 AM flight. This would leave us enough time to stumble into clothing, drive to the parking lot, take the shuttle to the airport and check in. Naturally, I fell asleep around 12:30 AM. We would spend Tuesday being awake for twenty-three hours. Ouch. The airport was a non-event. As we were flying out at the crack of dawn out of the least-used terminal on an airline that does not keep a hub in Philly (Delta) on a flight that was picking up most of its passengers in Cincinnati, it took us about fifteen minutes to both check in (exit row - woo!) and go through security. The flight was fine; I didn't sleep (I never can, really) and the connection in Cincinnati? Fine. The second leg of the flight had me watching Spiderman while Greg slept beside me (lucky him). And in Seattle, we got our bags and caught a Grey Line shuttle to our hotel with no problem. (The shuttle driver? Crazy anal. I guess you have to be when you're dealing with so many hotels and bags and people and stuff, but damn. He was like obsessive compulsive baggage guy and I'm surprised he didn't time us with a stopwatch when we got off the bus.) You may remember that I got our room at the Camlin Hotel on Priceline. Usually Priceline is my friend; this time unfortunately the room was crap. The hotel might be charming if someone put a little money into it, but right now it's just ugly and rundown. The first room we were given had no air conditioning. Maybe that would have been okay if we hadn't arrived on the hottest day of the Seattle summer (about 95 degrees out). They moved us into another room in a section not really attached to the rest of the hotel which "charmingly" overlooked a paid parking lot and had an incredibly uncomfortable bed and the world's oldest TV. The location was great, but given the option there's no way in hell I'd ever stay there again. We were starving when we got to the Camlin, so after sorting out the room we dumped our stuff and started to walk to the Market. We didn't make it that far, though, and stopped off for lunch at the Westlake Center. West Coast food courts are amazing. Seriously. If you live on the West Coast and have never eaten in an East Coast food court, you have no idea how lucky you are. The Westlake food court had Thai, Chinese, Mexican, Middle Eastern, wraps, at least three kinds of smoothies, Japanese - more ethnic food than exists in most of Philadelphia. We both had food from a place called Noodle something-or-other, where you could basically get the noodle dish of many nations. It was quite yummy. Afterwards we continued down to the Market, which I didn't remember. This would be a theme for most of the Seattle days. You will remember, perhaps, that I lived in Seattle (well, Bainbridge Island anyway) from kindergarten through the middle of second grade. I know I'd visited the Market, but little more. I got to discover it all over again, and it is amazing. We bought teaberry jam and a huge thing of blueberries ($1!) and browsed a comic shop and ogled the rows and rows of flowers for sale - huge lilies and dahlias and sweet peas and goodness knows what else - either loose or in huge arrangements that would cost about $70 here, but at the flower stalls cost about $10. An example:
Afterwards, we nipped back to the hotel and changed and caught a cab to Capitol Hill (no rest for the weary!). We ate Ethiopian food at Queen Sheba and dessert at Dilittante Chocolates and I bought books at Twice Told Tales and Greg shopped for CDs and I tried on vintage prom gowns. Then we walked back to our hotel (a theme for the trip) and slept like the dead for nine hours. And that, ducks, was Day One. |
