So the journey has begun, with an early trip to the train station. We managed to get the bulk of the preparations done, with just a few details to take care of en route. The day began with a shaky start, with my cell phone (which is also my alarm clock) deciding to implode sometime during the night, crashing so hard it needed to be coerced into life again the next morning. Fortunately we had 2 alarms set… thank god for backups!

The first part of our travels involved the train to Seattle with Amtrack (leaving at 6:40 am), a plane leaving Seattle that night at 11pm to New Orleans via Houston, arriving at 9:30 am. Although it sounded like a good idea to take the early train (all the other “trains” to Seattle are actually busses, and the thought was that doing the USA border crossing via train would be much less painful than in LAX or IAH airports), it made for an extraordinarily long day, with only 4 hours of sleep over the course of 62 hours. Made for a bit of a fuzzy final 12 hours when we finally made it to NOLA.

The weather was beautiful (although chilly) in Seattle, so it was a great day to walk all over after checking our large duffel bags at the train station. (A tip for those planning on such a trip – if you check your bags at the train, this service is free and you don’t have to pick them up until 1945 that night. Otherwise there is a whopping $3/bag charge.)

We spent most of the day wandering around the city, the only real destination being the Olympic Sculpture Park, good food and good beer (the latter two are never difficult to find in this part of the world). The first stop, as always for us, was the food portion of the agenda. With a little bit of help from Yelp, we ended up at Café Campagne for lunch, which was absolutely delicious. We almost walked by as the place was pretty much empty when we got there, but it didn’t take long for the place to start hopping, and was completely packed within 20 minutes of us arriving. We had the tartine with house-made gravlax and chèvre, and the burger d’agneau (lamb) which were both delicious. By far the best part of the meal, and the bit that still makes my mouth water is the butter served with the baguette, which was exquisitely creamy, and reminded me of home-churned butter when I was a kid. The first meal was also a friendly reminder of the difference of serving sizes south of the border – the burger came with a veritable mountain of frites, that even with the help of Jessica, I was barely able to make a dent in.

One of the things I noted while walking around the city, was how isolated the waterfront was from most of the area, hidden behind an elevated highway (which, ironically, still didn’t make getting to the waterfront any easier) and various industrial buildings. It reminds me of how lucky we are in Vancouver to be able to walk down to the water from just about anywhere downtown.

The Olympic Sculpture Park, although it has some interesting moments, is frankly fairly underwhelming. I had been warned by a friend who had seen it earlier that year, but even with that, the size and extent of it seem rather unimpressive.

And of course one must check out the local brews, so our final stop was at Pike Brewing Company for a couple of pints. The Heff and Monk’s uncle were delicious as always, and I sampled a decent variety that I haden’t seen at Vancouver’s Alibi Room including their cask IPA, double IPA, and their Kilt Lifter. Mmmmm.