May 24, 2004 Having enjoyed seven-and-a-half hours of sleep on the soft pillows and cloud-like mattress of the Pacific Palisades Hotel, covered with a feathery duvet, we should be wide awake at 4:15 AM this Monday morning. Choking down some heavy, high-protein power bars and fortifying ourselves with coffee from the in-room coffee maker, we are ready for the last day of our trip.
A bellman loads our luggage into a taxi waiting downstairs, we depart the now quiet Robson Street neighborhood, and are soon deposited in front of Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station, facing a public park. The neighborhood across from the park is a bit of a slum, with buildings decorated by graffiti. However, one or two have been pulled down and, hopefully, new and better edifices will take their place.
A stooped octogenarian shuffles up to us, and looks like the kind of rumpled person who might ask for a handout. But we have seen his face before, at this bus stop, and he soon proves the adage that “you can’t tell a book by its cover”. This individual is a local character who rejoices in the name of Cookie, and he is the man who, despite his frail appearance, takes charge of expertly slinging our luggage from the sidewalk into the baggage compartment of the Trailways bus that Amtrak hires to make a same-day connection with the Coast Starlight in Seattle. Ted asks if he is an Amtrak employee, but he replies that he is merely a volunteer and he has missed the 5:45am departure only three times in the last six years. I empty my pockets of all of my Canadian change, which includes several $1 and $2 coins, and give it to him along with my admiration for someone who maintains a regular schedule of useful activity in spite of his age and physical condition.
The driver remarks that the bus will be only one-quarter full this morning. So, when an identical white motorcoach pulls in behind ours, Sylvia asks him about it.
“That’s the connecting bus carrying passengers from yesterday’s northbound Coast Starlight #14 that arrived six hours late in Seattle.”
Travel Tip: Don’t even think about booking the connecting bus from Seattle to Vancouver when arriving on #14, which is scheduled into Seattle at 8:30pm. The connecting bus is scheduled to depart at 9:00pm and arrive in Vancouver at 12:20 midnight. Yes, Seattle hotels are overpriced. But consider the all-too-common fate of this morning’s unfortunate travelers, who guaranteed their Vancouver hotels (which are also overpriced) to their credit cards for late arrival. When they check in this morning at 6:30am or so, they will be expected to check out at 11am or 12 noon. We prefer paying the $130.00 + for the overnight in Seattle, and taking the Mt Baker International the following morning.
We depart on time at 5:45am and by 7am are shuffling through the US Customs and Immigration line at the border. We don’t have a line, as our bus is the only one here on this early Canadian holiday morning. On Victoria Day, most everything in the country closes down.
There is no Cookie here to help out, so the driver must unload all the luggage, and the passengers must schlep it into the building, then through the inspection procedure and out again to the bus, which in the meantime has moved forward one bus length to the building’s exit door. The inspector glances at our passports, asks how long we were in Canada, and waves us through. One of our fellow travelers, however, who is carrying a passport from the Philippines, is delayed while filling out extra forms. We stretch our legs while we wait for him.
Travel Tip: Remember, don’t carry more luggage than you can handle yourself on this bus, as there is nobody available to help you get through the border. And if you are thirsty or need a restroom, use the one on the bus before arriving at the border station, as there are no drinking fountains inside the building, and the restrooms have been boarded up since September 11, 2001.
As we leave the border station, we enter Interstate 5 which will get us to Seattle by 9am today. The bus unloads at the King Street Station, just a few yards from the door of the Baggage Room, where we check most of our luggage to Klamath Falls, and request Red Cap service to load our carry-ons into our Family Room F in the 1131 car of the Coast Starlight, which leaves at 10am. This gives us the freedom to stroll to one of the three coffee houses that are within a block of the station, where we enjoy fresh scones seated in an easy chair and watch the expensively-casual fashions that the early-morning working people are wearing. Life in Seattle is incomplete without a gourmet coffee in the morning.
Just three blocks from the station, a vintage brick building is under restoration. Signs identify it as the Cadillac Hotel, and if it is to be used as a hotel in its new reincarnation, it will be the only hotel within handy walking distance of the station for Amtrak passengers.
The Seattle station usually has some interesting equipment in view, and this morning it is a train that the Siemens Instrument Company has created, presumably to display their products to potential customers.
A freight train heads south with some Boeing 737 fuselages. The 737 appears to be a full size jet when seen on the tarmac, but they look rather diminutive aboard a flatcar. Ted (who used to fly) observes the width of these airplanes, which fit onto the flatcars without any overhang, and remembers their three-and-three seating with a narrow aisle in the middle.
“You can see that they are just about the same width as an Amtrak coach, with two-and-two seating – or in Acela First Class, two-and-one seating. Just think of how narrow those airline seats and aisles have to be to squeeze six individuals into the same space,” he says. We both shudder.
Aboard the Coast Starlight (the train that feels like our second home) we set up our laptops and printer, and go to work. We are glad we have brought both of our new laptops, now equipped with Windows XP Professional, as our new Dell Latitude has suffered several failures. We continue working on our previously owned IBM Think Pad. Are we just unlucky, or are laptops generally unreliable?
Sunday’s “Parade” section of the newspaper had two cover photos of the young actor who plays Harry Potter in the movies. One is of him as an 11-year-old, and the second shows him today at age 14. In the dining car for lunch, we are seated across from a chap who looks like Harry Potter will surely look when he turns 21, and remark on the resemblance. We find him an interesting conversationalist who leads a 1960s “retro” band. They all use authentic reproductions of 1960s instruments; he plays the bass.
After walks on the platforms at Portland and Eugene to get the circulation going, and a wine tasting in the Pacific Parlour Car, it is time for dinner. While we have encountered identical menu items on various trips, the way they are prepared makes a great deal of difference in their taste. We recognized our chef, a small chap with a peaked cap, who was on the platform getting a breath of air, as one of Amtrak's best. And sure enough, the meal is unusually good.
Across the table this evening is a New Zealander on a business trip, who points out that food exports from his country are being curtailed by quotas that both the US and European countries have imposed.
Soon we’re back in Klamath Falls, only one hour late, at the end of a wonderful trip.
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