Off to Seattle!

Saturday 16.06. Flight Stuttgart-Seattle

The night ends at 4am. The taxi arrives at 5.20am and surprisingly the train from the main station is on time, so I relax a bit... Hopefully, I will catch the flight that departs from Frankfurt at 9.50am.

Everything goes smoothly, the suitcase is about 20kg heavy - but I know that I can throw away almost everything. After a calm 10-hour flight with Lufthansa, we land in Seattle in the late morning at 11:20 and surprisingly we feel quite refreshed. The immigration is unusually curious and asks me how long I am staying, what I do for a living, and if I really get 4 weeks of vacation. I have to show the return flight ticket and explain the travel route.

Finally, we have the suitcases and take the bus shuttle to the car rental. As always with Alamo, there is a discussion with the rental agent about a higher car class. This time we really considered taking a SUV, but that means the trunk is always visible. First, they try to convince us that in the midsize class, from which we would get any car, there are neither cruise control nor power windows and everything is "very basic". We explain that we have been booking this class for years and have never experienced such a thing, because such cars are hardly manufactured in the USA either. But they assure us that cars are more expensive in Seattle and therefore they also have worse cars (huh?!), but they are also cheaper. And if we want to go to the mountains, we will only move slowly and not climb the mountains (we remember last year in the Rockies where that was not a problem). But we have time and a short distance on this trip and we are in doubt. They want 478 dollars for an upgrade to the next car class for 3 weeks and we strongly decline. Because of power windows?? Then the lady remembers that she could give us a manager's discount (we should remember that term) and the surcharge drops to 328 dollars after 2 minutes! With a heavy heart, we decide to believe the lady.

In the choice line (which is the collection of cars in one car category), we then find out that there are no more cars in the midsize class and the rental agent in the parking lot tells us to take a higher category - so they would have had to give us an upgrade anyway for our midsize reservation. And that without an additional charge! The lady at the counter was 100% aware of the lack of availability in the midsize class. I am furious. I run back to the rental counter upstairs and scold the lady for charging us 328 dollars for a car that they should have given us for free anyway because they don't have any cars in our booked class. Then the colleague from the neighboring counter joins in and says that she has informed the supervisor and manager not to let us leave the parking lot with a higher car without an additional payment! Because apparently there are plenty of midsize cars in the parking lot but just parked in the wrong place! I am speechless. They don't have a suitable car that we have already paid for, so they have to give us a higher category anyway, but they want 328 dollars from us and if you complain about it, you are even threatened!

Nevertheless, the lady tears up the receipt for the 328 dollars that I have already signed and I run back to the parking lot. By now, three customers with a midsize reservation have received a higher car free of charge and have left. We throw our things into a standard car, which is one category higher, drive to the barrier and leave. Now we have a gray Ford Fusion with a huge trunk, power windows, and all the bells and whistles. I am as angry as hell at Alamo. If they weren't always the cheapest provider, I would have stopped renting from them a long time ago. Every year the same crap. But this time in an increased potency.

The journey to Seattle is very slow. We are stuck in traffic. It's Saturday noon and we wonder if it's always like this here (it is!). We only reach our hotel around 2:30pm. We have booked a Quality Inn, and there is a 4-lane road in front of the hotel. The rooms facing the back are not ready yet. But before we look out onto the noisy street, we wait a bit, go online for a short time, and then check into an acceptable room for two nights.

Don't get tired! The time difference is 9 hours and when we leave the hotel at 3:30pm, it is already 12:30am on Sunday in Germany. The sky is cloudy and it is not very warm, about 17°C. We walk to the Space Needle, and there we find out that there is a wait time of 45-60 minutes to ride up to the observation deck and it costs 19 dollars. It's not very tempting with the cloudy weather. The Space Needle is a building that dates back to the 1962 World's Fair and at that time its height of 185 meters attracted a lot of attention. Normally, you can have beautiful views from the rotating observation deck all the way to Mount Rainier and the Olympic Range as well as the Cascade Range in the east. But not today.

Next to the Space Needle is the Seattle Art Museum and there is a lot of funny glass and plastic art standing around.

Seattle has about 540,000 inhabitants and an annual rainfall of 863mm. Even by North American standards, Seattle is a young city. Its history begins in 1851 when a group arriving from the East set up a camp on the shore of Elliott Bay which they called "New York Alki" (approximately: the final New York). After just one year, the settlers moved to the area of present-day Pioneer Square.

In 1889, a major fire almost completely destroyed the city. The city was rebuilt at a street level elevated by one floor to prevent constant flooding. In 1897, the Klondike Gold Rush in the Canadian Yukon Territory emptied half of Seattle. Even the mayor resigned from office to try his luck with a pick and shovel. Those who stayed in the city seemed to make a living mainly by supplying gold diggers with equipment and food, making Seattle the most important supply base for Klondike adventurers. Today, Seattle is a high-tech center. The region's most important employers are Boeing and Microsoft. In the Seattle metropolitan area, over 2,200 restaurants serve the famous fresh seafood and other local delicacies.

We walk past the Space Needle and board the Monorail. The planners of the 1962 World's Fair realized their vision of a mass transportation system for the future with this train. However, the monorail - which runs on an elevated track above the street between the buildings - has only one stop and a distance of 1.6 km. But for us, it is now convenient to quickly get to Downtown - without traffic jams, because it is above the street!

We walk to Pike Place Market and from there we have a nice view over the water to the mountains (which ones are they?). The Pike Place Market consists of several streets and its most important part is a covered historic market. The Pike Place Market opened in 1907 and is the oldest farmers market in the USA.

From the opposite side of the market, the success story of Starbucks began. The first store, which opened in 1971, is located here - and there is a line in front of it as if there was no coffee anywhere else, or as if it was particularly great here.

Starbucks - the first store worldwide

Starbucks seems to be everywhere in Seattle. We stroll through the covered part and see great fish stands and fantastic flower stands lined up next to each other.

It is raining outside by now and it is super windy. We actually want to find a cafe or a restaurant. It is 5:30pm when we find a place at an Italian restaurant and eat a salad hungrily. The first Budweiser of this vacation hisses and cracks at the same time. We have been awake for about 24 hours.

Therefore, we take a taxi to the hotel and as soon as I lie in bed, I fall asleep at 8:30pm.