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| View from our deck at Ship's Bay |
Only a couple hours’ flight, Seattle and Vancouver are
common getaway destinations from the Bay Area.
They’d been on our list for years, but we hadn’t yet been there. The San Juan Islands, on the other hand, we’d
never heard of. But one day Frieda
mentioned to a couple friends that we were thinking of finally checking out
Seattle and Vancouver and the husband of the pair said, “You really should go
to the San Juans.” So, Frieda did some
research and liked what she found. She thought the combination made for a nice
mix of urban and rural. Next thing I
knew, we were on a plane.
We got into Seattle mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, navigated
the confusing, inadequately signed terminal to the shuttle buses for the rental
car dispensary, picked up a new Prius, and headed downtown. Our hotel was between Pioneer Square and the
waterfront, and after we checked in and got the Prius safely tucked away in
their garage, we set out to explore the vicinity. The Alaskan Way Viaduct, an elevated freeway,
passes along the waterfront and gives everything beneath it a dark, grimy,
urban jungle cast. After a couple of
beers at an Irish pub, we wandered past the dock where the Washington State
Ferries land to Ivar’s, a famous seafood chain restaurant founded in 1938
that’s a Seattle institution. This one
is the flagship location. It’s a huge
place with views of Puget Sound from an open deck at the end. We sat inside where we had a window seat with
a view of the docks. It was comfortable
and our waitress was, if anything, over-solicitous. We had some clam chowder, steamed clams, and
fish and chips. Everything was good
without being exceptional. We felt it
was a place living on its laurels.
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| Deer family |
The forecast had called for some rain during the week, so
I’d brought a pair of rain boots. While
we were in Ivar’s it occurred to me that I’d forgotten to pack a shoehorn,
without which it would be impossible to put on the rubberized boots. So, we set out for the main shopping district
to find one. We walked all the way to
Belltown without success, then circled back.
Apparently, shoe horns are nearing extinction. The people at Target just gaped at me with
baffled looks on their faces. Finally,
we ended up at Macy’s just as they were closing where, in men’s shoes, we found
the mother of all horns, four feet long if it was an inch, priced, apparently,
by the foot at $4, and checked it out at the last open register. It took us half an hour to walk back to the
hotel, adding another mile to the two or so we’d already walked. We did not see any cruising cabs.
In the morning we set out for Anacortes in the Prius to
catch the ferry to Orcas Island. The
weather was utterly clear. We got there
early, the second car to line up. By the
time the ferry arrived, an hour or so later, scores of cars had joined the file
behind us. The ferry was huge, holding
well over a hundred cars, and got us to Orcas in about an hour. From the ferry landing to Eastsound, the
charming main town, was about nine miles, and then another mile and a half to
our B&B, a lovely place with a New England feel called the Inn at Ship’s
Bay, it sported a view of the Sound and families of deer roaming the
grounds. After checking in, we drove on
down the road to Cascade Lake and Mountain Lake in Moran State Park, both
picturesque ponds framed by hills wooded mostly with Douglas Fir, trees that
can live as long as a thousand years. We
had dinner right there at the Inn, which turned out to have an exceptional restaurant,
including some delightful white wine called Siegerrebe, produced over on Lopez
Island from a German grape related to Gewürztraminer.
Friday began with dark clouds and light rain. I wore the rain boots and we left the car on
Orcas and took the free passenger ferry to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island
where we had lunch and then went out whale watching. The captain managed to locate a pod of five
or six orcas, maneuvered the boat around in front of them, then just cut the
engines and waited. The pod got to
within twenty or thirty feet of the boat carrying on with their gymnastics,
breaching and doing somersaults and cartwheels as if they wanted nothing more
than to show off for us. It was
spectacular! Eventually I started to get
a little sick as we were getting tossed around quite a bit in the open
ocean. But as the pod moved on and their antics subsided, the
captain turned back for the harbor and once we got behind the barrier islands
the water smoothed out and gradually turned to glass as the clouds began to
clear and the sun peeked out. We caught
the 5:30 ferry back to Orcas and had dinner in Eastsound at the Lower
Tavern.
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| MacKaye Harbor |
On the way out of Orcas on Saturday we explored the left
lobe of the island, driving down to Deer Harbor before heading for the ferry to
Lopez. On Lopez, after lunch at The
Haven, a restaurant way too good for such an out-of-the-way place, we located
the Lopez Island Vineyards to secure a bottle of the Siegerrebe, a wine
impossibly both floral and dry. Then we
turned south for our B&B near MacKaye Harbor, a peaceful, remote place on
the south of the island. On the way, we
noticed the islanders were so friendly they waved just because they didn’t know
us.
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| English Bay |
In the morning we woke to find a deer family breakfasting on
the lawn outside our window, just as we had on Orcas. Our congenial hosts advised us to get to the
ferry early, as it was crowded on Sundays, but we nevertheless stopped at
Spencer Spit, a marshland park along the way, for a brief hike. We still got there early, and had a long wait
before boarding for Anacortes. On the
way to Vancouver we had a moment of panic after crossing the border when our
data roaming crapped out, leaving us with no GPS, a functionality of our phones
upon which we have become utterly dependent, despite having gotten along
without it for years. We had to find a
place to pull off the freeway to reestablish it (at $5/day). Then it carried us safely through the
confusion of Vancouver to the Sylvia Hotel on English Bay.
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| Laughing Sculpture, Morton Park, Vancouver |
We began our acquaintance with the West End by walking down
Denman Street to Robson. There was a
Safeway on the corner so we picked up some prepared food to take back to our
room. The hotel had originally been an
apartment building so many of the rooms, including ours, had kitchens. With dinner we polished off a fine bottle of
Pinot Grigio our hosts on Lopez Island had given us, and it made us too sleepy
for further venturing.
Monday morning, we walked south along the beach to the
Aquatic Centre and caught the ferry to Granville Island. We got a day pass for the ferries so we could
hop back and forth across False Creek, an inlet of the Sound, all day. We wandered around the island until noon when
the Granville Brewery opened, then went in to share a flight of ten beers and some
excellent French fries. Finished there,
we ambled over to the Public Market, full of all kinds of fantastic
foodstuffs. We shared the best cinnamon
crisp we’d ever tasted, then caught the ferry down to Stamps’ Landing for a
view of the distinctive Vancouver skyline before crossing again to Yaletown, a
posh area with kind of NYC Upper East Side ambiance, for some coffee and
groceries. After dinner we didn’t feel
like more walking so we stayed in and watched a colorized version of the
original 1937 “A Star is Born” on TV.
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| Steam Clock, Gastown, Vancouver |
In the morning we checked out of the hotel and drove to
Gastown, a West-Village-like area I loved.
We cruised Water Street on foot, bought some t-shirts, had lunch. I felt very relaxed there, at home. Afterward we reluctantly drove back to
Seattle, playing Tom Petty songs most of the way. We returned to the same hotel but for dinner
walked in the opposite direction from the way we’d gone before and had a
delicious meal at a place on 1st Avenue called Intermezzo
Carmine. It somewhat redeemed the
Seattle experience for us, but we still preferred Vancouver. On the way back to
the hotel we passed a bar with live music and the band was playing more Tom
Petty. RIP Tom.
