Tourist Sights and Attractions in Seattle, Washington

Forced to write harbor cruise instead of harbour cruise because of the US of A standards! The Seattle harbor is just across the road from my office. We decided to try the harbor cruise last weekend. The weather was not so good. It had been raining incessantly from the morning, but the brochure of argosy cruises say that “come rain or shine, our cruises are always on time”.

So, off we went to Argosy cruises on Pier 55. The one hour harbor cruise costs 18 USD per person. There are other cruises too. Locks cruise –> 1.5 hrs, Lake Washington cruise –> 2.5 hrs. We thought we would be the only stupid people to go for a cruise in this rain, but we wrong, as we were accompanied by 200 other fools!

The view of the Seattle downtown area was great, but we were looking through walls of water pouring down. I was taking a big risk by attempting to take photos with my new 18-200 700 USD lens! While i was doing so, a guy who was also taking photos came up to me and said “Mine is waterproof”. I replied, “Mine is not!”.

As luck would have it, the rain cleared up a few minutes after the cruise left the docks. The sun shone through a gap in the clouds and it lit up the Seattle skyline. What was until now a very wet cruise turned out to be a enjoyable one after the rain cleared. You can see the Seattle aquarium in the photo below.

We also some sea lions basking in the afternoon sun. It seems that these sea lions come up to the shore on some of the remote beaches on the islands close to seattle.

A sea-plane also flew overhead. There are seaplane tours of seattle. This is on the plans for this weekend. I hope that the weather is fine then.

Some more photos from the cruise. Enjoy…

written by Rajaram S \\ tags: harbor cruise, seattle

After lunch on the Sunday before last, we just took out the map and started looking for some place to go. Along with the map, we had around a dozen guide magazines picked up from wherever they could be picked up from. After lot of analysis and 1.6x multiplications, we decided to drive to Port Townsend. We chose this place because the route would travelling across many islands and would overlook Victoria, Canada across the Pacific.

We entered the destination as “City center, Port Townsend” and the distance shown was just short of 60 miles, not much of a drive. So, off we went on I-5 north. The route shown by the GPS was pretty straightforward – I5 N, Edmonds, Kingston, Port Gamble, Port Ludlow and then Port Townsend. But, the GPS forgot one important thing in its summary.

When we were nearing Edmonds, dutifully following the GPS and enjoying the fall cours, at one point , the GPS voice casually said:

Go Ahead 140 yards and take the ferry!

Ferry??? We thought that we had come out on a drive. But, it was too late, we had committed ourselves to Port Townsend and we were not going to return without seeing port Townsend. Luckily, there was only a 10 minute wait for the next ferry and off we went, on our first ferry trip in Seattle.

We thought that the drive-on ferry would be a basic service across the islands. But, we were wrong. It was as good as a regular cruise boat with ample seating space, viewing decks and even few restaurants. The trip from edmonds to kingston was a short 30-minute one. But, the views were great. The wind was almost as on the open seas.

The drive from Kingston towards Port townsend was even more pictureqsue, crossing many islands and bridges, including Hood Canal Bridge, the longest saltwater floating bridge in the world. Finally, after many twists and turns, we reached Port Townsend and entered Fort Worden State Park. We wanted to reach an old lighthouse inside this park called Point Wilson Lighthouse.

Port Wilson lighthouse is more than 100 years old and presented a great sight in the light of the setting sun. We took some photographs, felt the pacific ocean and were on our way back after a good afternoon’s drive!

written by Rajaram S \\ tags: drive, ferry, Port Townsend