Alaska 2025 ~ Embarkation Day minus 2

The alarm rang at 3:30 and we were on the 4:30 shuttle. The ticketing area at CLE was insane at 5:00 a.m. Where are all these people going?!!! After standing in line for about two minutes for PreCheck, a security person got the attention of the traveler ahead of us and told us all to follow her. She knew another PreCheck TSA line that was not at all busy, and we were placing our bags on the belt in a couple of minutes. But then I saw a TSA official grabbing one of my carry-ons. Yes, the dreaded search.

Most cruise lines have noticed an uptick in Norovirus outbreaks. I’ve been following the accounts in the various Holland America and Alaska Cruise groups on Facebook. Out of an abundance of caution, I stocked up on Clorox wipes and the travel size of Lysol spray. Unfortunately, the only Clorox wipes I could find was the 75-count container. Y’know, the one that weighs about a pound-and-a-half? Yep, that’s what the three guys peering into the scanner screen were trying to figure out when I realized my bag was taking a long time to clear the TSA screening. The lovely gentleman looking through my belongings laughed and asked, “Going on a cruise, huh?” Busted! But note that we returned home ten days later completely healthy, after much handwashing and cabin wiping-down.

Bar Symon in the Cleveland airport has become our favorite pre-flight breakfast place. It’s never packed at 5:30 a.m. and the wait staff lets us sit quietly with our NYTimes puzzles, refilling our coffee and tea while we wait for boarding times. And then we were onboard in our comfortable First Class seats.

I booked Alaska Airlines, a oneworld Alliance member, through American Airlines and was thrilled to learn Alaska Air now offers nonstop flights from Cleveland and Pittsburgh to Seattle.That meant we would depart CLE around 7:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time and arrive at SEA just after 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time. That’s pretty sweet.

This is where I confess to being one of those regular fliers who takes a bag of chocolates to the flight attendants to say “thanks in advance for the excellent service.” I have never gotten the kind of welcome I received from this crew. They were so appreciative of the treats, and I believe every flight attendant on that plane stopped by our seats to thank us. They also shared some goodies with us that they keep tucked away—cookies and chocolate that are well known in the Pacific Northwest. John and Lauren were our cabin attendants, and provided us with a very enjoyable flight. Lauren had a Southern drawl I had to ask her about, as she reminded me of my piano partner in Youngstown who hails from Mississippi. Honestly, every aspect of the flight made me want to fly Alaska Airlines from now on every time it’s available for our chosen routes.

The flight was smooth and easy. For the first couple of hours, the smoke from the wildfires in western Canada obscured our view of the areas we were crossing, but as we neared Seattle, I was treated to beautiful views of the snow-capped mountains.

We had arranged through the hotel for a town car to pick us up from the airport and take us to the Inn at the Market. The bags took close to an hour to arrive on the carousel, and the construction around the airport made the traffic there just nightmarish. But we found our driver, Vitaly, a lovely and well-spoken man from Ukraine who told us interesting stories about emigrating from Ukraine to the U.S. when he was nine years old. We finally arrived at our hotel about 11:00 a.m.

We checked in, but the room wasn’t ready, so we dropped our bags and called a cab. We were heading to the Fremont area for another delightful afternoon with Jas’s cousin, Rita, who has lived in Seattle much of her adult life and loves showing off that beautiful city to friends and family. I had not met Rita’s husband, Andy, on our previous visit in August, 2017, and was happy to spend some time with this lovely new-to-me friend. Rita had salads and sandwiches prepared for us, and the weather couldn’t have been more beautiful for a backyard lunch.

After lunch they drove us to explore the Ballard Locks and the Lake Union area. So much beauty everywhere! I could easily live in the Seattle area. Of course, I think that about almost every part of the world I visit. Noticing our yawns after early rising and the four-hour time change, Andy and Rita drove us back to the Pike Place neighborhood and dropped us at our hotel. Our bags had not been delivered to the room, so there was a little up and down to work that out, then Jas napped while I sat by the 8th floor window, loving the expansive view over Puget Sound.

Here’s where I have to expose my ignorance of the Seattle area. I had been there once before, on a Pacific Northwest vacation that Jas and I took in 2017. You can read the account of that entire trip here, if you’d like. We did visit Pike Place Market on that trip, but not extensively. We walked around a few shopping areas, saw fish being tossed, admired the hand-crafted items, then walked across the street to Cutter’s Crabhouse for lunch.

But back to my story … as I planned for this trip, I wanted a hotel in the thick of things for my sons and their loved ones to be able to enjoy the ambiance that is the Pike Place area of Seattle. Neither of my sons had visited Seattle before, so Mom was on a mission. I pulled out my Frommer’s Pacific Northwest and read virtually every hotel and neighborhood description. When I examined the website for Inn at the Market and saw this description, “Inn at the Market is the only downtown Seattle hotel located directly in the famous Pike Place Market”, I knew this is what I wanted. The Market must be three stories tall, right? And then the Inn at the Market had been constructed right on top of it, right? We’d just have to take an elevator up and down from our rooms to explore the Market.

So when Jas woke from his nap, my intention was to figure out how to get from our hotel to the market, which I knew, based upon the hotel’s website, was directly below the hotel. 😝 Sooo, I learned that, not only was the hotel built atop the market, but also that the market closed at 5:00 p.m., which was long past. (Could I have felt any stupider?) The next step in my day was to find someplace to eat dinner.

We walked the block around the hotel and sat on the sidewalk outside the hotel restaurant, Bacco, where we shared an order of fish and chips and gaped at the very heavy traffic. Then we walked a little more, snapping pictures and ultimately finding Shug’s for ice cream. Back to the room, some reading, and asleep before 9:00. Scott and Cynthia would arrive from Dallas around midnight, and we’d see them in the morning.

Just a note from an old programmer who has watched computers grow up: Inn at the Market has the worst software in the history of bad software. If you ever decide to stay there on a trip to Seattle, triple-check every arrangement you make with the front desk. Several transfers I had reserved and paid for were lost, and many phone calls from Ohio were not recorded in our records. I think the biggest problem was that the agents I spoke with at the hotel left all three rooms in my name and never recorded the names of the other guests. It took a number of trips down to the lobby over the course of the two days to ensure that we’d have places to sleep and rides to the pier on Saturday.

But the views from our room were great, so there’s that!