Blessed beyond measure

My Portland & Seattle Holiday

The Memorial Week Vacation was good. We went to Seattle & Portland for a week. Had a great time catching up with Carolyn and Willie! So much fun talking to them that we kept talking and talking… and non-stop till they have to go to bed… :P

The trip has its share of problems… Our flight to Portland was delayed for almost 3 hrs. And when I called to confirm our hotel reservation in Seattle, we realized the hotel has wound up its business… what a joke! And the next hiccup was we were supposed to go for our whitewater rafting trip in Mount Hood National Park, along Clackamas River. On that day when driving to the place, we called the company for directions, and it turned out that the trip was cancelled because other people have moved their schedules resulting in not enough people for the trip. To think that Carolyn has asked us if we wanted to check email and Yiren felt that he should check his voicemail on his old phone….But we did nothing… how suay can we get??? The probability of hotel closed down is probably very low and we were told rafting trip being cancelled was 5%. However…. FRET NOT!

God always turn things around to our favor! Amen! The new hotel that we got is nearer and better than the first one. Hotwire refunded my money. And because of the cancelled whitewater rafting trip, we get to see Mount Hood, a beautifully awesome mountain, and also breathtaking Columbia River Gorge and salmons swimming upstreams. Plus that day, weather was really cold and we were kinda worried if the water will be too cold and if we were adequately prepared… God knows us best! Praise the Lord!!!!

Seattle is kinda fun city, very much like Singapore. It is a walking city where you just could walk around till you drop… so unlike Houston…

We went to Microsoft campus (in Redmond) is really big like a university campus, not showy at all. Kinda surprise for me cos I thought Bill Gates very hao lian… actually he is humble and not as high profile as Donald Trump.

The Famous Pike Place Fish Market is a definite must go and have to be in the morning… told you is a market… market closes at late afternoon so all the action are in the morning… It’s very interesting watching them throw fish. The book “Fish Tales” is based on Pike Place Fish Market and promotes fun in workplace. Recommended reading.

We have a romantic dinner at Space Needle. It’s a revolving restaurant with good bird’s eye view. Worth it on a clear day. Thank God that the day we went up, the sky was very clear, no clouds at all.

Starbucks originated from Seattle. Of course we went to the first ever Starbucks store opened, near Pike Place Fish Market. The first logo was different than what it is now. The old logo >>>>>>>

We also took a tour at the Boeing Factory. It is really interesting to see how the planes are made.. Educational… An equally educational tour is the Underground Tour of Seattle, where you learn the history of how the City is built… very interesting indeed… and the forefathers of Seattle wasn’t exactly very smart though… the new city of Seattle was built on the second floor so the underground was actually the first floor… it is planned badly such that there were a lot of problems, such as flush don’t work properly when the tide came in, and became a “up flush” instead of “down flush”.. eeeYucks!!! Roads are muddy and sank, etc etc… Such that a big fire burnt down the whole city and it was rebuilt.

And we also learnt an interesting lesson on Mount St Helens, the still very active volcano. However the eruption came sideways instead of upwards, the different kind of lava, liquid vs molten. Highly recommended. However that fateful day was simply too cloudy, couldn’t see her at all.

Ferries or cruises are what Seattle is big on. The Harbor Cruise we took gives an overview and introduction of Seattle. We also took a ferry to Bainbridge Island... from where we drove back to Portland via Highway 101. The route is better along California than the Seattle to Portland’s one. A bit disappointing though.

Portland has beautiful National Parks and Scenery. Just to name two of them: Mount Hood and Columbia River Gorge. And the drive is the northwest is simply beautiful with lushes of greens. I love Mount Hood, is really beautifully stunning. The sight of the Mountain with its reflection on Trillium Lake just awed me…

Also we went to Bonneville Dam and Lock which is between Washington State and Oregon State. There we saw salmons swimming up the Fish Ladder up streams against the currents, how very interesting and amazing nature is! Check out the video here.

Check out my pictures here. Warning though: it is REALLY a lot of them! Enjoy!

posted by Ying @ 9:43:00 PM