Tuesday, 7 August 2018

Flying East to go West...

Waking up to an alarmingly early alarm was the real price we had to pay for finding a cheap flight. It was so early, that it felt that it was the first time that we’d seen the sky properly dark in ages. Seeing the familiar stars shining overhead as we set out eased the disorienting sensation of being up so early. In a Meet and Greet style, a guy was waiting for us at at the drop off zone at Heathrow and in a surprisingly casual way, we unloaded, handed over they keys and he drove off with our car! We loaded up my new Lowe Alpine packs and checked in...



Somewhat bizarrely, our ‘cheap flight’ to America, involved flying in the wrong direction, to Amsterdam and catching a connecting flight from there to Seattle. After a bit of a delay, the sun was just rising when we took off. You can’t really tell from the photo, but thanks to the clear skies, we saw London laid out like a map as we flew over. The fields around the city were all looked parched and yellow.



It only took about forty minutes of flying when we reached land and began our descent.



The Airport in Amsterdam is enormous. After touching down, we must have taxied for scveral kilometres before reaching our terminal and crossed several major roads on the way!



Having arrived late, we only just made it to the connecting flight in time, so settled into our seats hoping that our bags had made it too. Someone must have been looking out for us, as the flight was full except for one seat - which happened to be next to me, so we had extra space and legroom which made the following ten hours much comfier than we’d paid for. Breakfast was an unorthodox mix of coffee and beer, but it seemed to do the trick of putting me to sleep!



We had some nice food during the flight, watched a few movies and could get up to stretch our legs easily enough when we wanted. Thanks Delta Airlines!



Having managed a few hours of sleep to keep us going, we arrived into Seattle Airport at about 11:30am having set off from Dockenfield that same morning. Timezone time travel is hard to get your head around. 



Next up was a train to the city centre, a short walk to the port and then a ferry to Bremerton.  We were right on time for each as both pulled away just as we had got onboard.



We had travelled this same route in February on our way to Hawaii, so it actually felt quite familiar, but this time with the summer skies and warm temperatures, it felt like taking a cruise again. Anna was waiting for us at the other end in the new Tesla, so we were picked up in style in my first real ‘electric car’ experience. There is no ‘dashboard’ just a giant computer screen in the front. The setting weren’t all turned on, but it could drive itself and knew what other cars were around us. It felt pretty futuristic. Any comfy!



The afternoon passed by in a flash as we tagged along with Anna as she did a few jobs and we took in the sights.



We managed to keep ourselves awake into the evening to try and beat the feelings of jet lag and went out for dinner in town (in the Tesla!), before falling into a deep sleep the minute we got back in. Amazing to be here.




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