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December 26, 2006

Christmas In Canada

Elaine and I returned from Canada tonight, having spent the last three days and two nights up in Vancouver, visiting with her family for the holidays. On a lark, we elected to take the train to Vancouver, rather than driving. A few notes from the trip:

• Amtrak offers several trips each day from Seattle to Vancouver. Most of these, however, are actually bus service, which is both a) sneaky and b) pointless. Amtrak = train, as far as the world is concerned. If I want a bus, I can call Greyhound. Sheesh.
• Assuming you've worked past the bus sneakiness, the Amtrak 510 will get you to BC the old-school way. One catch: it departs at 7:40 AM, and they want you at the station a good hour before departure. Eagle-eyed readers (or, at least, those possessing a watch) have already deduced that we would therefore need to be at the station around 6:30 AM (aka, "O Dark Hundred") to catch our ride.
• Our departure time was made ever-more entertaining (from a sleep standpoint) by the fact that we needed to catch a bus to the station (unlike the airport, you can't leave your car), and December 24 was a Sunday this year. Metro, therefore, was operating on the most limited schedule possible, short of a snow day or something. Whee-ha.
• Despite this, Things Worked Out, and we found ourselves at King's Street Station in south Pioneer Square, a bit on the bleary-eyed side, but smiling and happy and looking forward to the prospect of a good 72 hours together.
• King's Street has been around better than a hundred years, and, for the most part, looks it. You don't have to work very hard to imagine what it must have been like in the heyday of rail transport, people bustling to and fro at all hours. The station is midway through a decade-long renovation, which has put it into a halfway state not unlike that fixer-upper house your buddy's been working on for the past three years. Parts of King's Street are immaculate; others are shabby. It should be breathtaking when it's all done. Can't wait.
• Riding the train in Seattle is not unlike taking a flight from a small regional airport in New York, Minnesota, or Arkansas (trust me, I've done it). Small regionals often have just a handful of flights each day - the flight times are so predictable that they're frequently just laser-printed on 8.5" x 11" paper, laminated, and then posted behind the counter. Therefore, folks working at small regionals know when the flights are coming, know when to expect the crowds, and have adapted their days around them. There's a small-town unhurriedness to it. King's Street Station has exactly this feel, in every regard. The 7:40 train will leave at 7:40. There's nuthin' else goin' on until then, and nuthin' goin' on for a while after it, either.
• We did see a good-sized crowd build for both both Portland (the southbound link) and Vancouver. I was happy to see rail being used in Seattle (Link is still three years away), but it may have just been the holiday.
• The train itself basically offers an airplane seat with a bit more legroom, a bit larger a tray table, and more freedom to move around the cabin. There are ceiling-mounted monitors that show in-transit movies ("The Polar Express", "Invincible") as well as the usual GPS-type stuff (current train location, current time, estimated time of arrival).
• One nice bonus: the seats all have A/C power. (Score!)
• Trains offer eye-level delights to their passengers (as opposed to the 35,000-foot view), and the Northwest has enough natural beauty to make you want to put away the laptop and just ... gaze. Amtrak runs up through Everett, Mount Vernon, and Bellingham, and hugs the water for the bulk of the journey. With a clear morning and the Olympic Mountains in the distance, it's quite something to see.
• It's also really cool to see a lot of towns up-close-and-personal as you roll through them. Seattle's included in this list -- you leave town by going along the waterfront, passing the various Piers. So awesome.
• All told, it took us about four hours on the rails to get to Vancouver. Not the speediest thing ever, and even less so with the "be at the station an hour ahead of time, and, oh yeah, take Metro on a Sunday" thing ... but the company was good. We did arrive on time, and kudos to the conductor.
• Elaine's brother, Stan, picked us up at the Vancouver terminal. At this point, Holiday Weekend kicked off in full force. Diet and restraint were out the window; instead, he and I kicked it on the couch with video games, DVDs and Cheetos while Elaine got caught up on her book club obligations. Sleeping in was about the most strenuous thing anyone attempted.
• (Stan and I even managed to start - and finish - Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows.)
• "Talladega Nights" came highly recommended (my father, among others, can't even mention the name of the movie without cracking up), and I must admit that it didn't disappoint. I laughed a lot, but mostly because a) I love seeing Will Farrell do his George W. Bush impression (seen White House West?), and b) the filmmakers throw a lot of funny stuff at you, and hope that some of it sticks. (It does.)
• "Clerks II" - Liked it, didn't love it. Which was surprising, because I usually giggle over Kevin Smith movies. Rosario Dawson's the best thing in it, bar none.
• (Oh, and thanks to "Clerks II" I now have "Goodbye Horses" - aka, "The Song They Played In The Silence Of The Lambs Where Buffalo Bill Gets All Made Up And Dances For The Camera" stuck in my freaking head.)
• Elaine's family has apparently heard that I'm taking singing lessons, because her mom got me an iKaraoke for Christmas (thanks again, Elaine's mom!). Yikes. Talk about giving a handgun to a three-year-old...
• (I'm totally looking forward to playing with it.)
• (In a soundproof room.)
• Stan, Elaine and I hit the mall today to see Canada's Boxing Day madness in all its consumerist glory. Pretty amazing, but not too different from our Day-After-Thanksgiving consume-a-thon.
• At one point, we strolled through a HMV and looked at the CDs and DVDs they had on the racks. You know something? It was strange. There I was, standing in the middle of a store that, say, 5 or 10 years ago I would have enjoyed browsing. And today? I've no use for it. NetFlix has pretty much killed off my desire to own DVDs (Why bother?), and I've stopped buying music on CD in favor of iTunes. Loading up on plastic discs just seems so twentieth-century, all of a sudden. It was bizarre (and a little overwhelming), like stepping into a buggy-whip store circa 1925. The world is changing, you know?
• The Amtrak experience home just about killed off any goodwill the service had earned on our way up. The line for customs was hellishly long; the train station's line-management facilities are poor-to-nonexistent, and the ride back to Seattle felt like were poking along at a leisurely 35 miles per hour. We were only 15 minutes late, all told and together, but the sum total of the time we invested in getting back made me feel like a chump for not taking the car.

It's great to be back in Seattle. Happy holidays, everyone.

Posted by Gavin Shearer at December 26, 2006 11:29 PM. Posted to Travel.

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