Back at the turn of the 19th century, the wealthy showed their status by taking a trip around the world, stopping at many places for a week or a month. They took with them a few servants and trunks of clothing for all environments. We're not that wealthy, have no servants, and travel lightly. This is our sort-of Round The World trip, though it's all in the Northern Hemisphere and takes only six weeks
We'll begin with some time in Seattle with our daughter and her husband. Then we'll do the long flight non-stop to Singapore (16 hours!!). Our cruise on Azamara Quest starts after five days of viewing Singapore attractions. The cruise will visit Sri Lanka, India, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Crete and end in Greece. Many days will be spent at sea, playing, conversing, reading, or just taking it easy. After all that, we'll continue west-bound with a flight to Dublin, Ireland. After a Guiness or two we'll fly home from Dublin.
25 April to Seattle
Back in the air again after having spent the weekend in Wisconsin, where O picked up a terrible head cold.
We used up some points on Delta to fly their flights 2333 to Detroit and 304 on to Seattle. We're using Detroit to break up the trip into two segments that avoid a long segment like Atlanta-Seattle. Changing planes in DTW is usually easier as well. And so it was. Both flights were on time and totally boring - the best kind. Cabin steward Otis on 2333 was funny and helpful. After landing he said welcome to Cheboygan, a city in northern Michigan. Cold, raining, glad we didn't have to go outside. Had lunch at Max & Erma's in the DTW concourse; glad we did because the chicken on 304 was weird.
Enterprise rented us a Toyota Corolla. We checked into the Mediterranean Inn in the Queen Anne neighborhood. O's head cold combined with the pressure changes in the airplane rendered him nearly deaf. I-5 was challenging as usual.
Susan says we should meet for lunch tomorrow.
So it's now 2058 PDT, or 0100 body time. Time to relax and rest. G'nite.
We're loafing this morning, adjusting to PDT and O getting over his cold (which is improved). Got in touch with Susan - we'll go to her house and ride with her to El Moose, a Mexican place we know in Ballard.
Later: We had great Enchiladas Suizas at El Moose. Susan parked her car in the VW dealership lot next door, where they purchased the ID4 and plugged it in. After eating and talking we went on to Larsen's Bakery. We picked up Danishes and coffee to take to Carkeek Park, which has a lovely view westward out over the Sound toward the Olympic Mountains. Sat at a picnic table and just chatted about this and that, bringing each other up to date on happenings. Train tracks run along the Sound so we watched a couple of very long trains go past.
Susan took the picture at left since you don't always have a view of the Olympics.
We returned to Susan and Bryant's place and chatted some more. Then Susan noticed O's voice going gravelly and O noticed his nose running again. Time to go back to the hotel, take medicines and rest. Obviously not fully recovered.
S&B have a scheduled event tonight, so we're on our own for dinner. Then up early tomorrow to go to S&B so D can participate in Susan's streaming cast.
We came back to the hotel and rested, took a nap. Got up at 1800 (all times local) and hiked to Buckley's Pub for pub food. Place was noisy and packed - the Kraken are playing the Avalanche on TV. Many TV's in the place, all tuned to the hockey game.
Good pub stuff, not-so-good IPA (local Hellbent). Hiked up the street to Safeway to get Cortisone and incidentals for the evening.
Then back to the room to take it easy.
27 April Thursday Seattle
Up at 0700, got goodies from the Starbucks in the lobby and had breakfast in the room. Good start to the day. O's cold continues to improve, but he's not taking prisoners.
The weather is beautiful for the third straight day, which makes us think we're really in Idaho. Sunny with high 60's today, 70's for two days after that. Then the clouds return, heavy rains, storms, flooding, farmers complaining it's too wet to plow, and so forth.
About 0810 we left for Susan's place. Traffic was very light, which surprised us - maybe folks really are still working from home. O set up his MacBook to do things. Susan & D went upstairs to do Susan's podcast.
Susan has 30 or so regular followers to her cast, which centers on the SimCity application. She and her followers make up buildings and landscape features in the game.
The ladies had a great time with the podcast. O could hear them upstairs laughing like mad. Later they said there was a lot of interaction with the audience who were also enjoying it. Turns out they created D's childhood home on Long Island. It brought back lots of memories for D and Susan learned from it.
O looked ahead at the Singapore SG Card application and found it can't be completed until tomorrow. This is Singapore's Health Declaration and Arrival document, must be submitted in the three-day window ahead of arrival. Doesn't look too hard, especially compared with the Indian E-Visa application, which demands information you never think of needing for such a thing - like father's middle name, grandfather's birthplace and phase of the moon the day of your wedding.
Azamara's web site is still only partially functional for our voyage. Progress from the old website to the new one has been painful. It now says On-line Check-in for our voyage will be available on 15 May, when we will have left India going to Egypt. I have no idea what these guys use for a database - migrating to it should have taken far less time. Further, the damn thing says we still owe $3k when I have papers that show paid in full. We shall have harsh words with them on-board, or a lot of wine.
Speaking of partially functional, this Corolla may have a good rep, but it's decidedly a stripped-down version of an automobile. It lacks many features I'm accustomed to having, like automatic headlight turn-on when it gets dark. The suspension is hard, something like a sled, so you feel the poor streets of Seattle. The dashboard alarms are cryptic; a door left ajar shows as a tiny spoked wheel. O still hasn't figured out how to enter it without hitting his head.
Then we went to lunch at a sports bar called Engine 18, located in an old firehouse. Six or seven years ago O&D went there with Carol and Phil, the owners of a tour company called Inroads Ireland. While chatting, they sold us a tour. Lunch came to about $5,080 all told. The place has changed owners and motifs, but the food was good. Spicy soup cleared O's sinuses.
Back at Susan's place we decided to take it easy again the rest of the day. O started sounding gravelly and looked tired, so we took off for the hotel. We went up to the roof to take some pictures since the weather is so nice. One with D and Space Needle, one of the harbor.
We loafed, did some computer chores, and took a nap. Continued slow improvement in O's cold but still not taking prisoners.
After 1800 we decided to go to the local Safeway to get items to eat and drink. Ate the goodies in the room, had individual small bottles of wine. Did computer things, and went to bed.
April 28, Friday Seattle
O was up early so he submitted the "SG Cards' of health declaration and personal data to enter Singapore. Received acknowledgement back, so that's done. There was also a cute video about the process of entering Singapore that was useful.
Another beautiful day; we could see the Olympics without the usual haze over the sound. Brilliant.
Slow day today. We can't seem to "get into" Seattle. Guess it's because we're thinking ahead too much.
We had breakfast in the room again with goodies from Starbucks downstairs. Then out to Susan's. We chatted for a while, then started the laundry. Chatted some more. Bryant came down for lunch; we weren't hungry so they ate while we did iPhones.
We chatted with Bryant about his new job (very happy at Pokemon) until the dryer buzzed. He went back to work upstairs. We folded clothes. Eventually we wandered off to return to the hotel.
There, we packed for tomorrow - almost all done!! Now to loaf until dinner.
O's cousin Fran & husband Duane picked us up to take us to Palisade for dinner; Susan & Bryant joined us. The food here is very good and the view is outstanding. The picture at left with Mt Rainier in the distant left-center shows how clear it is today. We chatted about all sorts of things including cats, condo management, Singapore, Wisconsin, Bill's kids, and more. We all had some seafood dish and agreed they were excellent.
Then S&B drove us back to the hotel. We finished packing all but the small rolling carry-ons. We're ready to do a dash for the airport in the morning.
Then on and on and on to Singapore.
29 April Saturday depart Seattle
This is the first trip on our new Passports. The old ones were almost full and would have expired only two months after this trip ends - not sufficient for most places. We booked Premium Economy using points to get a reasonable price for this flight. We're in seats 32H&K, the right-hand bulkhead seats (for best legroom) with window. The aircraft is to be an Airbus A350-900, new to us but about the size of Boeing's 787-10.
We got up early, dressed, and headed for the airport. We turned in the rental and took the shuttle to the Singapore ticketing, which went smoothly. We went to the gate in the remote South terminal and waited. The crowd gathered and eventually we entered. That's when we discovered SA had put another row of seats in front of our row, depriving us of the bulkhead seating.
They recovered time and pushed back only ten minutes late. Takeoff was impressive. Turned and headed north for the great circle route.
Lunch came quickly, followed by lights-out. OBE system is quite good. We reached the northern most point on the route well above the Aleutians and turned toward Russia about 1430PDT.
Now we'll jump to the next page and the next day. It will be confusing if we try to keep up with time zone changes. For instance, as we take off at 1020, the time in Singapore will be 0220 the next day (16 hours difference in time zones) (or 10+16=26-24=02).
Photo Link O
