Sunday 24th May - Farewell Canada

We docked in Vancouver just before 8am this morning and sadly left The Norwegian Sun at around 9am. We had most of the day in Vancouver as our train was not due to leave until 5.45pm. Luckily there was a baggage drop at the cruise ship terminal so we did not have to carry our heavy luggage around with us.

We wandered around the Gastown area which was interesting. It is called Gastown after a character called ‘Gassy’ Jack Deighton (he talked a lot!). He was an Englishman and in 1867 he was one of the first settlers in what was to become Vancouver. The story goes that had a barrel of whisky and said to the local timber workers - build me a hotel and you can have some whisky. He had his hotel in 24 hours!!

We also intended to visit Chinatown and see a walled Chinese Garden but that meant crossing a very dodgy part of town. We set off, but on seeing several unsavoury characters hanging around in groups we somewhat hastily back-peddled and gave up on that idea.

We collected our luggage around 3.30pm and took a cab to the Central Pacific station. Before boarding the train we had to (yet again) go through US immigration. The train left about 15 minutes late and crawled along for the first hour and we began to believe all we had heard about the tardiness of Amtrak. But after we crossed the border into the US, and the customs officials went though the train, it speeded up. The line ran along the shore of Puget Sound and we were so close to the sea that it was almost like being on the ship again. A very scenic route that took about 4 hours.

We actually arrived in Seattle 5 minutes early, at 10pm, and after reclaiming our luggage we took a cab to our hotel - Comfort Suites Downtown Seattle and fell into bed, exhausted, around 11.30.