Seattle November 2021

We wanted to go to a Kraken game, so we planned a short trip to Seattle. We were able to take advantage of a day off school on a Thursday, which made flights cheaper and tickets easier to find than would have been the case on a weekend. Back on August 24, I wrote about submitting leave requests for all of my personal days for the year, and the first of them was for the Friday of this trip, so we were able to leave on Wednesday night and come home on Saturday.

If you're thinking, "weren't you just in Canada," you are correct. Monday night, we were in Canada; Tuesday night, we were home; and Wednesday night, we were in Seattle. It was a busy and tiring week! After driving for ten hours on Tuesday to get home in time to vote - and we did drive straight to our voting station before even going to our house - we did laundry, unpacked and repacked, and then I went to school on Wednesday.

While I was between meetings at school, I checked our flight status and immediately started to worry. As you can see, the first flight from Dulles to Midway, was delayed and was scheduled to land after the second flight departed from Midway for SeaTac. Not good news. I was pretty panicky, thinking we might have to find a hotel in Chicago and fly to Seattle the next morning.

C called Southwest and did the "call back" option in order to speak with someone about the flights. As luck would have it, while he was waiting for the call back, a Southwest rep happened to call him in anticipation of the flight issues, and really worked some magic to get us on a flight out of Reagan that would get us to Chicago in time for our connection. While this was obviously good news, Reagan is nowhere near as convenient as Dulles, and we would have to get there during rush hour traffic. In the course of a very stressful 90 minutes, C picked me up from school, we drove straight to Reagan, and we ultimately made it to the gate in time. We also easily made our connection in Chicago, our flight to Seattle was on time, and we took a lyft to our hotel, arriving around 12:30 am. Overall, a stressful day that ended up working out in our favor. Actually, we really lucked out on all of our flights on this trip - for three of them, we had an empty middle seat between us, and for one of them, we managed to snag the exit row with only two seats in it!

We basically had Thursday and Friday in Seattle, with the game being Thursday night and our flight home being Saturday at 2:00 pm. In that time, we hung out with and went to the game with my friend Dan, and wandered around the city with no real plans or itinerary. It was the best! While I love trips where we do and see lots of things, I also love trips where we do practically nothing!

I'll write a separate post about the arena and the game tomorrow, but here are some pics from our time around Seattle!

this pic is from the summer of 2016

I tried to take a similar pic on this trip

original flight
scheduled to land at Midway
at 8:54 pm

connecting flight
scheduled to leave Midway
at 8:53 pm

the time of the first flight
just kept getting later and later

by switching from Dulles to Reagan
we were able to land at Midway
at 7:45 pm in plenty of time
to make our connection

we still weren't taking any chances
and sat in the first row just so
we could be the first people off
the plane at Midway

honestly these were the most
enormous leaves we've ever seen

Chris Cornell statue

Top Pot...so good!

the public library is amazing

the infamous gum wall
disgusto barfo

what tourists do when they're in Seattle

first red cups of the season;
fitting we were in Seattle

Happy Tails to you!