The other side of the country

We flew to the west coast to visit two of our three kids and to check out Portland and Seattle as possible landing spots for a few months next year. The kids are thriving; so are Portland and Seattle.

Here are the logistics. I'll cover each city in future posts (10,000 naked bike riders and enough coffee shops to give you caffeine jitters just taking a walk).

FLIGHTS: We flew SW from Orlando (an excuse for a visit to Barnie's Coffee Kitchen) to Seattle, which cost less than flying into Portland. (Although, curiously, flying from St. Martin to Portland is less expensive than flying to Seattle. Go figure.) We paid $768 (two people, roundtrip) for the Orlando-Seattle-Orlando flights.

And we got to spend a little time in Milwaukee where they sell cheese top hats. Because.

PARKING: Since we were leaving for 17 days, we looked around for cheap parking at the airport and found Jetway Parking was the least expensive. We paid $78.45 for 17 nights. They drove us to the airport (10 minute ride) and picked us up within 15 minutes of our calling them on our return.

BUS vs TRAIN: We took Bolt Bus from Seattle to Portland. Tickets were $34 each for the one-way trip. We left Seattle from right outside Chinatown at 8 and arrived in downtown Portland at 11:15 a.m. Nice, clean ride. Heading back to Seattle from Portland we gave Amtrak a ride. It took much, much longer. We paid $64.75 for two tickets. The ride was supposed to be 3:40 on the Cascades train. It took 6 hours. There were delays for other train traffic and for work on the rails. At one point as we were crawling north, someone on the PA system informed us that we couldn't go any faster because of the heat. So, take the bus ... or walk, either would be faster.

UBER/LYFT: In Seattle we used both and had great experiences with each. I know there are legitimate issues about Uber and Lyft having an unfair economic advantage over licensed cabs, but they are SO convenient and the drivers are SO much friendlier.

CITY TRANSIT: We used the LINK rail system twice in Seattle. It was on time, clean and inexpensive.

COMING SOON

Seattle: Pike Place Market, Beecher's Cheese, Oddfellows, Lake Union's wooden boats, Discovery Park and serious hills. Portland: Voodoo doughnuts, St. Honore Bakery, Petite Provence Restaurant, Mount Tabor, Crescent Beach and the search for tennis courts.