Seattle - Part 2 - Free Night

Alright, so it wasn't really that traumatic. We arrived around 11am for check-in at the Sixth Avenue Inn in downtown Seattle. We had anticipated that we wouldn't be able to check-in until later that afternoon. I believe check-in was at 3pm, so we were obviously early and ready to accept the wait.

Christina went in to check to see if we were lucky enough to have a room ready and came back with good news. We were set to get into the room with no extra charges. But there was one factor that we were unaware of until we arrived - we were booked in a smoking room. We accepted the fate, and proceeded up an elevator that is either possessed or has various mechanical problems to the point of it attempting to open the doors after it's started moving. We hit the button for the smoking level, and waited for the elevator to decide to let us leave the lobby. The doors opened (sooner or later) and we walked into a haze of decades worth of smoke and nicotine built walls. We scurried to our room hoping that the smell was just the rooms near the elevator.

We got into the room, and immediately considered trying to book another hotel. We walked into a room with walls of bad spackling that has been tarnished with a layer of nicotine. A bedside lamp had mold growing on it, and the bathroom looked like what you would expect a prison's does. I have a pretty sensitive allergy to smoke smells in general, but Christina confirmed that it was pretty bad. I couldn't bare to stay in the room longer than a few minutes, so we set off to try to get another room or scout out other hotels for vacanies. The front desk said that they were booked completely, but that we could try back later to see if they had any openings. We opted to hang in there for the afternoon and left to find oxygen.

We left the hotel, and aimed for an eatery and a grocery store to buy some odor eating items in case we were stuck in that room for the night. We ended up out of downtown Seattle, so we made a path to the Northgate shopping mall, and the largest Target I've seen ever. We bought our stink-be-gone materials and then went across the street for some faux Mexican food at Azteca. Christina got something healthy looking and I ordered up a platter of grease and cheese.

We got back to the hotel a few hours later and luckily they had another room available. It was relatively smaller, but it had fresh air. We lugged in our luggage, and attempted to settle into our home for the next few days. Internet access was existent only for $10 a day, that can be spendy considering it almost 10% of the hotel room just to access your email. Hotels that I've installed Internet at allow their guests to browse from the lobby area for free or at least use the kiosk in the lobby for free. The Sixth Avenue Inn has made a deal with a vendor that only allows you to browse Amazon.com for free. Why Amazon, you might ask? They embed their own affiliate key in so that if you do make a purchase, they get a sizable kickback. Nice of them, now if only Amazon sold maps or a conceirge service. We decided to go scout out the area, grabbing pamplets from the hotel. I spotted one that is for the Seattle "Go Card" - we decided to go scope out the area and pick up one of these cards.

The Go Card is an all (or multiple) day pass for various attractions in Seattle and other numerous other cities (Check out GoCard.com for the other cities. It is one of the best ideas I've seen in awhile, and I wish I would've came up with it. In Seattle, we purchased the card from the Space Needle ticket admissions. The clerk at the Space Needle didn't understand the full usefulness of the card and actually almost convinced us not to buy it. See, with some venues there are restrictions on when you can visit the various attractions. With the Space Needle, they only allow 9-5. So his assumption was that every place would only allow you to use it between 9-5. But anyway we decided to pick up the card and wait to activate it until the next morning. You activate the card on your first use. 2 Adult cards were around $90. With the cards, you are supposed to receive a nice booklet that has hours that the attractions are opened and more. We didn't receive one of those, so I plotted our destinations and then Christina followed each up with a phone call to make sure that they were available.

Our plan included:

Safeco Field tour (Home of the Seattle Mariners)
Argosy Lakes tour Cruise
Experience Music Project
Science Fiction Museum
Space Needle

In order for us to make a profit, and yes I checked, we need to do 3 of the attractions in a day. So we rested the rest of that night, grabbed some fast food and bought "The Devil Wears Prada" on PPV. The movie was much better than I expected. If you have a bored night and nothing to watch it's worth a rent. Stanley Tucci rules in any role and Meryl Sheep is hilariously evil.

The next morning, Seattle proved to be stereotypical, it was raining. It's really Seattle best kept secret that it really doesn't rain as much as people think it does. During the winter there is a lot of rain, but that's how it is everywhere in the Pacific NW. If you don't have snow, you have rain. But to return to the point, it was raining in Seattle. We embarked towards our first destination: Safeco Field.