The land of Starbucks

Was a fairly uneventful 3 days in Seattle, a nice little flight with a cool little layover. Spent Aug 16-18th there and had a nice relaxing few days with one of our most senior pilots who I haven't flown with in many months.

Day 1 had us hoping to Kamloops and back, then continuing on to Seattle. Once in Seattle we arrived at our hotel which was quite nice, and right at the Seatac airport. The Doubletree, which is a member of the Hilton hotel groups was certainly a nice way to spend our 2 nights. Upon initial check in we found out we were on the 1st floor and tried to get something a little quieter, but they were fully booked. I gave them my Hilton Honor's number and then all of a sudden a couple of rooms popped up. I managed to get us on the "Hilton Honor's Floor" in one of the hotels 2 towers. This was a nice upgrade. The hotel rooms were excellent, large, clean, modern and even the soaps, shampoos and moisturizers were all made by Nuetrogena.

I also found out the hotel had 2 gyms and having just come back from Holidays I figured I should check it out. Holy cow, better than most of the gyms I've seen back in Calgary. All brand new equipment and weights, I was impressed. All the machines had personal TVs on them along with 2 big plasma tvs on the wall. I spent nearly 2 hours there each night trying it all out.

The 2nd day we decided to go downtown Seattle to Pike's Place Market and the Wharf. We managed to get a "crew car" from the facilities we used at the airport (free car for the use of airplane crews using the business). We drove down, found some parking and found out they were celebrating the 100 yr anniversary of Pike's Place Market, it was very busy and quite the event. We had a good time just checking things out and I of course found a Starbucks to consume (when in Rome!).

We left the next day for a fairly uneventful return in to Calgary. However it was rather stormy on our ride in and we had to divert quite a bit south of the normal arrival procedures, then come around from the east side of the airport to avoid the worst of the storms. We had a few good bumps coming in and I was glad I had taken the time to really cinch my seatbelt tight.

After finishing up at the airport I went to join my roommates who were at a local bar where one of my roommates was a finalist to win a pair of Harley Davidson motorcycles.. he did not end up winning however. We ended up going out on the town that night and had some fun. Not exactly the rest my liver was expecting, but it was a necessary evil and I had a good time out with some friends.