Pacific Northwest

In autumn 1997, Eddie and Craig rode Amtrak's Coast Starlight from Los Angeles to Seattle. After a few days, they continued by bus to Vancouver, and later they hopped aboard a sea plane and flew to Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. Upon their return, Craig wrote the following travelogue in order to share the trip with distant family and friends. They invite you to read it.

click for our hotels

Riding the Rails We started out of L.A.'s beautiful, vast Union Station on a big sleek Amtrak Superliner. Jackie, our sleeping car attendant, made us feel right at home with fresh-cut flowers and chocolates in our cabin, and she even presented us with a little souvenir clock.
The Deluxe Bedroom was similar to the accommodations on a cruise ship. We were delighted by everything. Eddie played with the climate controls and music selections while I did my best to put our two immense pullmans out of the way. When the Coast Starlight pulled out of the station around 10 a.m., Eddie and I were seated comfortably in the cabin, sipping coffee and nibbling on the chocolates.			By day you have a sofa running the length of the Deluxe Bedroom, from window to door. At the base of the window is a collapsible table, and on one side of the table, facing the sofa, is an armchair. The wall by the door contains a shaving lamp, a mirror, and a tiny sink, plus a few cabinets stocked with tissue paper, soaps, and shampoo. In one corner of the cabin is the door to the private combination shower and toilet, about the size of a phone booth.
You meet the most interesting people on trains. Sleeper car passengers had their own lounge car, known grandly as the Pacific Parlor Car, and that's where we sat while the train barreled through the mountains of Chatsworth in long black tunnels I never knew existed. Since the train was just starting out, only a dozen or so passengers were in the lounge car, two of which were black mobile-phone salesman from Oakland.
The guys told us that they ride the Coast Starlight often on business trips to L.A., even going so far as to splurge on a Deluxe Bedroom so they'll have a place to stretch out in privacy. Eddie and I, who had been saving for months for the trip, found this astonishing.

Stranger on a Train
While sipping my beer and gazing out the windows, I was startled to see what looked like a hobo out of the corner of my eye. He was coming toward us down the aisle. He stood a lanky six feet tall, wore a dusty baseball cap atop his stringy gray hair, and had on pale, soiled blue jeans. And here he was walking through the First Class lounge! I don't expect everyone to be wearing Armani, but c'mon--if you're gonna pay for a First Class train ride, wash your clothes, dammit! He passed us by and disappeared on his way to the dining car. The dining car separates First Class from Coach, and none of the riffraff from Coach is supposed to be allowed beyond it. Eddie and I exchanged glances. The man wasn't the sort of person you expect to see on a train, much less in First Class. Although I felt something was amiss, little did I suspect the man's true, nefarious intentions.

Lunchtime
We chatted with the mobile phone salesmen until our name was called over the loudspeaker. Lunchtime! Eddie and I reported to the dining car, where the spiffy bow-tie-wearing host seated us at a table with an aerospace engineer and his girlfriend. They were riding to Carmel. They wanted to hear all about the Deluxe Bedroom and our plans for Seattle and Vancouver, and we asked him a half a dozen questions about the Stealth Bomber, which we'd last seen flying over the Hollywood Bowl on the Fourth of July.

Our lunches arrived as the train sped through Santa Barbara. Eddie had a cheeseburger, his favorite food group. I had a tasty chicken-sausage sandwich on a toasted baguette. French fries were not an option; I imagine the last thing the kitchen wants to deal with on a speeding train is a hot vat of oil. Instead, we had potato chips and a zesty coleslaw. The food was excellent. The kitchen occupies the entire lower level of the dining car. Everything's made to order, as befits the tradition of train dining. The girlfriend said her parents took a train trip in the '70s while Amtrak was trying out airline-style packaged meals. Ridership dropped steeply, and in no time Amtrak was back to staffing its kitchens with actual chefs.

Observation After lunch we retired to the Observation Car, the whole second level of which is furnished with rotating chairs and loveseats. Eddie fetched us iced teas from the café on the lower level, and we settled into two cushy chairs to watch 104 miles of the California coast zoom by. It's amazing that there's so little development. You'd expect to see strings of vacation homes and condos, but instead it's mostly pristine, deserted beaches with nothing but the sapphire-blue Pacific on one side and the train tracks on the other.			The chairs and loveseats in the Observation Car swivel, so you can catch all the views around you through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
I longed to photograph it all, but my camera gets finicky when it detects a window. And besides, everything was moving by so fast you barely had enough time to say, "Oh my, isn't that something!" before the scene changed. Time flew. We couldn't believe it when, while the train wound over and around hills on its way toward San Louis Obispo, Eddie looked at his watch and saw that we'd been in the Observation Car more than five hours!
We took showers in our cabin. It was cramped but totally serviceable. You have to sit on the toilet lid in order to wash your feet, for instance, but the water was hot and plentiful and we were grateful for it. What a drag it must be not to be able to take a shower on a two-day train trip. I don't know how those people in Coach did it.

Food, Glorious Food At dinner we sat with a black English professor from Cal Poly. He was also riding all the way to Seattle for a vacation except he was in Coach. Outside, the farms of the Central Coast rolled by; before we finished our salads the sun had set completely and it was pitch dark except for the dim lights twinkling in the windows of tiny scattered homesteads. The professor said that for the ride back he was considering upgrading to First Class, and he asked us about the sleeping arrangements. We'd been nosing around up there, so we were able to describe all three accommodation levels.	Aside from the Deluxe Bedrooms, which are on the upper level of each sleeper car and have private bathrooms, there are Economy Bedrooms on the lower level, which all share the same bathrooms and showers. You can also consider the no-frills sleeping compartments we noticed at the front of our car: On both sides of the hallway are tiny rooms no wider than three feet, with a sliding glass door and curtains to shield them from the aisle. Inside are two seats with a little folding table between them. At night the seats come together to make one bed. A second bed drops from the ceiling. It's basically a bunkbed inside a closet, sort of like in the old days when people slept on bunks behind thick curtains.
When we finished, the professor said, "Sounds good to me. I've been able to sleep OK in the airline-style seats in Coach, but it's hit and miss. Sometimes you get somebody snoring next to you. I just finished grading all my final exams, and I feel like treating myself to a sleeper car."
"You really should," I said. "You'll like being able to stretch out on the bed, and the privacy."
The waiter arrived with our food. Eddie and I both had beef tenderloin, and it was cooked to perfection. It came with garlic mashed potatoes, sautéed summer vegetables, and of course hot, crispy dinner rolls. The professor had the swordfish, and we all enjoyed a glass or two of California merlot.
"All your meals are included, aren't they?" asked the professor.
"Yes." That's the way it is in First Class.
"I bet you're both getting desert, then."
I said, "You better believe it!" Eddie ordered chocolate layer cake and I opted for the blueberry cheesecake. Yum!

Sleeping
When we returned to the room, we were delighted to discover that the sofa had been converted into a twin bed and an upper bunk had been lowered from the wall. Each was dressed in cool white sheets. Our attendant, Jackie, even centered little mints on the pillows. Outside the window we caught a glimpse of the San Francisco skyline.

Some people have the best sleep of their lives on a train. "It's like being rocked gently to sleep!" you hear them gushing. I'm not one of those people. I had the lower bed, and it was perfectly comfortable, but the motion of the train kept jolting me awake. Two years ago I had found it difficult to sleep on the night train from Paris, but I figured that was because those European trains are only single-story. Being in a double-decker train was smoother and quieter, no question about it, but it was still too rambunctious for me. I drifted in and out of sleep all night, consoling myself with the knowledge that it wasn't like I had to run a marathon the next day.

Eddie slept well, at least until the early morning. We had forgotten our alarm clock but wanted to be in the dining car at seven to enjoy the beautiful Northern California forests. So Eddie "programmed" himself to wake up at his usual six o'clock time. Unfortunately, he woke up at five o'clock. He didn't dare go back to sleep for fear of sleeping longer than another hour. He pulled the curtains back an inch and spent an hour watching the wilderness speed by.

Over the River and Through the Woods
We were seated in the dining car at seven o'clock sharp, sipping coffee and taking in the scenery. The forest was so lush and green. Beside us--sometimes below us--was the swift, rocky Sacramento river, which the train followed for about 35 miles. One moment we'd be in the shadow of giant evergreens; the next moment the train would bound onto a sunlit meadow. While we awaited our dishes, I counted six solitary deer grazing a few yards from the tracks.

Eddie had French toast, and I had pancakes. We both had sides of bacon and several cups of delicious coffee.

Our companions at table were two elderly gentleman. Each had a long gray beard. The older one was stooped over and walked with a crooked wooden cane. He looked like a hermit. The other one looked like Santa Claus. What a remarkable sight they made so early in the morning! I thought my sleep deprivation was playing tricks on my eyes when I saw them following the host to our table. I had muttered to Eddie that we were about to have some interesting company. We thought we'd have to endure two cranky, smelly old geezers. What a delight they turned out to be! The younger of the two--that is to say, the one who was a mere 70 or 80--was a lecturing architect. He'd recently spoken at UCLA and was on his way to give the same lecture in Seattle. He was in the process of building his third home, or, I should say, their third home, for we quickly discerned that they were a couple. They also had a Deluxe Bedroom.

"I slept like a baby," said the architect. "I always do. There's nothing like a night on a train." He took a sip from a glass of orange juice.

"You're drinking my orange juice," the older man protested.

"They'll bring more," replied the other one calmly.

The older man scrutinized his glass and frowned. "Half my orange juice is gone."

"Now, Gerald, don't make a scene."

Something outside the window attracted the older man's attention. We were passing through a tiny village consisting of a dozen or so homes, a general store, and a gas station, all nestled in the woods. "Ah, the lovely town of Dunsmuir," he said. "I visited here some thirty years ago. Hasn't changed."

We passed the morning in the Observation Car, marveling at the scenery and sipping caffè lattes. Great, snow-covered Mount Shasta loomed on the horizon. In no time we were traveling around the base of it. The north side was even whiter. Imagine, snow in August! Soon we were riding along the shores of Klamath Lake, just outside the quiet hamlet known as Klamath Falls, Oregon. The black English professor we had dinner with the night before came into the car and chatted with us. He said he had a pretty good night's sleep in Coach after all, once he came down from the after-dinner coffee we all partook of.

As lunchtime approached, the train started climbing through the mountains, and by the time we were seated in the dining car, the train was beginning its descent. It was breathtaking! The train tracks hugged the side of a sheer cliff. Looking down was a good way to scare yourself. Looking straight out the window, all you could see was the distant mountains and the sky--it was like we were flying. We had the good fortune to be sitting with a middle-aged man who had ridden the Coast Starlight a dozen times. He knew all about the geography, and, as a bonus, he was a train buff. Every few hundred yards, we'd go through a trellis tunnel which, we learned from the man, kept avalanches in winter from burying the tracks.

The Masked Man
We washed up in our cabin, brushed our teeth, and settled into the Observation Car once again. The train was on the Oregon plains now, traveling around 100 miles per hour through humble little towns. Eddie took a stroll down to the Coach cars to see what they were like, and I was left to witness the most surprising thing: A young Hispanic man came walking down the aisle dressed in street (and I use the term disparagingly) clothes. You know--baggy jeans, oversize windbreaker with some sportswear logo emblazoned on it, scuffed athletic shoes. Everyone else was dressed in vacation casual, and he looked like he just stepped off a street corner in the barrio.

I try not to judge anyone solely on his appearance, but how someone presents himself does matter, and I don't think it's prejudice to say so. He dressed like a gang member and was the only Hispanic on board. But hey, it's a free country. The strangest thing was that he was holding a white washcloth over his mouth. It's was bizarre. Did he have emphysema? Tuberculosis? Motion sickness? He proceeded toward the Coach cars, and a moment later Eddie returned. "What on Earth was that?" he asked.

I said, "Oh, you saw him too?"

"Yeah. What trash."

"Maybe he has a cold and was trying not to cough on people."

"Maybe he's a loon."

The Masked Man makes two more appearances in our story, the last of which involves handcuffs.

The Jig Is Up
We flipped through magazine but couldn't concentrate on anything because the scenery was too distracting. We went by lakes, over bridges, through tunnels. The engineer announced over the intercom that we were approaching Oregon's one and only covered bridge. I went out into the aisle to take a picture of it, for it was on the opposite side of the train from our cabin window.

Whom should I have to step aside to make room for but the Masked Man? He was heading from the sleeper cars toward the dining car. That sort of person has a First Class cabin? What was the world coming to? At least he didn't have the washcloth over his mouth anymore. He stepped hurriedly down the aisle, staring mostly at his feet and avoiding eye contact.

As we pulled into the station in Salem, the jig, as they say, was up. Eddie was taking a stroll outside. I was sitting in our cabin, reading up on Seattle in our Fodor's guidebook, when I saw out the window two policemen escorting a man off the train. Remember that gray-haired hobo I was surprised to see walking through the First Class lounge yesterday, the one who was wearing a black cap and dirty jeans? It was him. The policeman made him sit on the platform a few yards from the train.

Eddie burst into our cabin. "They've arrested a train robber!"

"I knew it! That guy sure didn't belong here."

"Jackie says they've been looking for this guy and his partner for a few months. They get on in Coach and then come back to First Class and raid the cabins."

For safety reasons, the cabins do not have locking doors. That's one of the reasons only First Class passengers are allowed in those cars. Some sleeper car passengers even store their suitcases on luggage racks at the end of the cars. Sure, every sleeper car has a full-time attendant, but he or she can't keep an eye on everything at once. As difficult as it was to lift our suitcases up the stairs and find room in the cabin for them, Eddie and I were now glad we made the effort.

"The guy has a partner?" I said.

"Yeah, it's a pair they're looking for, Jackie says. They're searching the sleeper cars now."

In a few minutes an Amtrak security officer emerged from the train triumphant. He was grasping the arm of the Masked Man. The police handcuffed him and made him sit beside the other thief on the platform. The various train employees and all the onlookers applauded.

While we were underway about a half hour later the engineer made an announcement because, due to the length of the train, there were hundreds of passengers who could not have seen what delayed us at the station. The engineer said over the intercom that a pair of thieves, who had been at large for several weeks, were apprehended while the train was stopped in Salem. No stolen property had been discovered on them this time, but they were riding with invalid tickets and were identified by several employees as the wanted men. Now we knew why the Hispanic man was covering his face when he walked through the train.

Journey's End
We sat down for dinner while the train zoomed over the bridges of Portland. We had about four hours to go before reaching Seattle. Our companions this time were an excessively talkative Chinese woman who owned a chain of coffee bars up and down the West Coast, and a young Hungarian man who had been living in the States for about a year. It was accents galore! The Hungarian was eager to hear all about the time we spent in Budapest. Although he came from a distant village, he knew about the places we visited. He even helped us with our pronunciation. The woman went on and on about how wonderful America is, which was nice to hear. She hoped to impress upon her three children how grateful they should be for the opportunities here. They should take their mother for an example. Ten years after stepping off the boat, she and her husband owned and operated a chain of coffee bars.

There were all kinds of other things on the menu, but Eddie and I each had the beef tenderloin again--it had been so good the night before, we couldn't pass it up! We had glasses of California merlot again, and apple tart with ice cream for desert.

By the way, it was Saturday, August 30, 1997.

On the train, we were oblivious to what the rest of the country already knew, namely that a certain car had crashed in Paris. The most I'd heard were the words "accident in Paris" as they floated by my ears earlier that day, but I never could have guessed what the people were talking about.

We were relaxing in our cabin, freshening up for Seattle, when Jackie's trembling voice came on the intercom. "Ladies and gentleman, I'm sorry, but I have some sad news to tell you…." We were stunned. I was grateful to be in the cabin, for I could just stare out the window in private and let the news sink in. Dead, dead, dead. It seemed impossible, and it wasn't like I was a Royal Watcher--I never much cared to hear about them. But I knew the world had just lost a compassionate, powerful woman who had been using her celebrity to do good works.

Later I would hear commentators, such as that tedious windbag Rush Limbaugh, say that the public should be at least as saddened by Mother Teresa's death as it was about Princess Diana's. "Why aren't people hysterical over the loss of this wonderful nun who devoted her whole life to helping the poor?" these idiots asked. "They're just more upset about Di because she was glamorous!" Limbaugh and the rest of them were missing something important: For Mother Teresa, a woman in her eighties, death was the normal course of things. Princess Diana was a 35-year-old mother of two. People her age aren't supposed to die, so the public was understandably reacting with more shock and distress.

Our Hotels
Seattle	Vancouver
Inn at the Market Go 86 Pine St., (206) 443-3600 Big, handsome rooms in a superbly located four-story inn. Pike Place Market is across a cobblestone street. We ended every day on the inn's rooftop deck, which overlooks Elliott Bay.	Hyatt Regency Go 655 Burrard St., (604) 683 1234 Our room had a balcony that overlooked the landmark Hotel Vancouver. Pay a little extra to stay on the Regency Club floor, where breakfast and afternoon appetizers are served. The floor has its own concierge.

The Emerald City At nine o'clock we rode a taxi from Seattle's rather shabby train station up to Pine Street, where our hotel overlooked Elliott Bay. The highrises of Seattle's shimmering Downtown rose up behind us. We had read about the Inn at the Market on Fodor's Web site six months earlier and asked our travel agent to call. The place was hugely popular--only two rooms were available, so our agent snatched up one of them. A couple of months later I happened to mention the place to a colleague at the office, and she said, "Oh, that's where my husband proposed! You'll love it! Be sure to go out on the roof the minute you check in."			Pike Place Market, which has been open since 1907.
We unpacked in the huge, beautifully appointed room and went out on the roof with cocktails from the honor bar. The view of the bay was wonderful. We stretched out in two of the dozen or so white Adirondack chairs that were scattered about. Cool night breezes washed over us. A string of lights twinkled like a diamond necklace on the shore across the bay, and glowing yachts bobbed up and down on the dark water. We made the roof a ritual of our trip, returning to it each night to unwind.
The inn gets its name because it's across a cobblestone street from the famous Pike Place Market, Seattle's number-one attraction. It has been a bustling farmers market for most of the century. Early the next day we fetched coffees from a nearby shop called Seattle's Best Coffee and strolled through the market. Glorious fruit and flowers surrounded us. Shoppers tapped on melons and felt the heft of peaches in their palms. Eddie picked out some luscious green grapes for a snack later. Fishmongers yelled out orders over piles of crabs. Hundreds of dead fish eyes stared at us from the mountains of ice. The scent of fresh bread drew us to a counter, where we bought chocolate croissants to nibble on.			Eddie forgoes the local Oh My God peaches and instead stocks up on luscious grapes, to be snacked on throughout the day.
When our appetites had been sufficiently stimulated, we had breakfast at a place called Etta's across the street, then rode the waterfront streetcar about a mile over to Pioneer Square, which is the city's Old Town district. Although we hadn't made the reservations our guidebook recommended, we were still able to get tickets for the noon session of Bill Speidel's Underground Tour . How fascinating it was! I count it among the highlights of our vacation.			Craig rested his Pentax on a mailbox and set it up for an extended exposure in order to capture the lights of Pike Place. A city bus zoomed across the shot.

Dirt, Corruption, Sewers, Scandal! A bright, attractive, multiply pierced young woman with close-cropped red hair served as our tour guide. She was funny and informative. She led us down the dark corridors and through the musty, abandoned rooms of the Seattle of yesteryear, which still exists beneath the current city. Now for a little history.	Not one drop of rain fell on us in Seattle, which is a minor miracle. Although the city's annual rainfall of 38 inches isn't as much as some other major American cities (New York gets 40, Miami a whopping 60), the frequency of rain is greater. In New York it might pour for two days then be dry two weeks, but in Seattle, as my friend who lives there confirmed, it seems to sprinkle all the time.
Seattle was first built nearly at sea level. For more than half the year, the streets were under puddles because rainwater couldn't drain to the ocean. The place was basically a swamp. Coaches would sink three feet in the mud, and soon people wouldn't bother to take them into town at all. One winter an 8-year-old boy drowned in a puddle! The headlines read "Boy Drowns in Intersection of Downtown Seattle." Seattle was becoming the laughingstock of the Frontier.
An irresistible invention came on the market that made matters worse: the toilet. People's homes were so close to sea level that a toilet would only flush at low tide. If that wasn't inconvenient enough, when you made the mistake of flushing your toilet at high tide, it flushed up instead of down--disgusting! People started building elevated bathrooms to house the new contraptions so they wouldn't have to wait until low tide to flush; one bathroom was 17 feet above the house! For people who couldn't raise their bathrooms, Seattle's newspaper printed the tidal schedules. This went on for eight years before a solution presented itself.
A printer's apprentice spilt a bottle of ink on a candle, and Seattle burnt to the ground. Merchants and homeowners rushed to rebuild, but some sensible civic leaders said, "Wait a minute. Let's do it right this time. Let's build the city well above sea level." They knew Seattle would never become a world city if children were drowning in the streets and toilets were spraying their contents all over the bathroom. The plan was to rebuild the town on the ruins of the fire, along with other landfill, so it would be at least 12 feet above the sea.	In Seattle, we found literal expression of two common terms. Criminal activity everywhere is often said to take place "underground," but in Seattle that was literally so. Also, as we learned on the tour, Seattle was home to the very first Skid Row. The city's most prosperous mill was downhill from where the trains would unload the logs. The slope between was greased up so that the logs could be skidded down to the mill. The locals called this Skid Road. Flash forward a few decades. The mill is closed. Bums and ne'er-do-wells start congregating in the area. A visiting mayor remarks that his city has a hangout like Skid Road too, and he brings the term with him when he goes home. "Road" changes somewhere along the line to "Row."
The plan commenced. Tall brick walls were erected along the sides of the streets and the space between was slowly filled. However, some of the merchants were so eager to reopen their stores, they didn't wait for the new streets. They rebuilt the stores right were they had burnt down, even though their front doors now faced a brick wall. People had no choice but to use the shops, so the merchants made quick money. More and more merchants followed suit. Soon the new Seattle streets were completed. They stood about 12 feet higher than the buildings on either side. To shop, you had to climb down a ladder from the street. It was inconvenient, especially for the women of the day in those huge heavy dresses, but it was the only option.
After about a dozen accidental deaths--mostly drunks falling off the street--the city fathers condemned the lower levels of all buildings. You had to start using your second floor as your ground floor. Everyone complied. The streets were widened so they would butt up against the buildings, and steps and front doors were put on the second stories to make them first stories. The underground was soon taken over by gangsters and prostitutes.
On the tour, we saw the remains of one of the world's first elevators, invented and built by a man named Otis. The site was especially fun for Eddie and me because we have Otis elevators in our apartment building. One of the underground rooms we visited was a parlor with a few of the original velvet chairs and crinkled, fading paper peeling off the walls. Outside the shattered windows was what used to be the wooden sidewalk, now trailing off into a dark nowhere. "Watch out for rats," warned our guide as she lead us through a low tunnel lit only by a string of dim white bulbs. We climbed a rickety staircase and emerged into an alley at street level.

Pee-attle
After a day of sightseeing, Eddie had one thing to say about Seattle: People could piss in the streets less. Surprisingly for such a rainy city, Seattle has a great number of vagrants. Or maybe we just noticed them more because we were spending our time in the middle of the city, where they tend to be. We couldn't walk twenty feet in any direction without detecting the odor of urine. "Watch your step," our underground guide had cautioned earlier, when we found ourselves trekking through an alley. "Just because you're in Seattle doesn't mean the puddle is rainwater."

More Sights During our remaining day and a half, we kept ourselves busy riding to the top of the Space Needle, venturing to the outskirts of town to see the Chittenden Locks (our first time seeing locks in person), shopping in the world's first Nordstrom's and another department store called The Bon Marché, and marching through the Downtown streets to see noteworthy architecture.
Seattle's best sightseeing bargain is the Bainbridge Island Ferry. For $3.50 round-trip, you cruise the bay for a half hour, dock at the island for a few minutes, then cruise back. The views of the Seattle skyline were wonderful from the water. The inhabitants of Bainbridge Island have all kinds of money--I guess it would be the Seattle equivalent of Brentwood. The ferry is how they commute from their posh woodland homes to Downtown Seattle. On the cruise over, the ferry was packed with football fans who had just left the first game of the season at the King Dome. On the ride back, the big ship was nearly deserted.			For a measly $3.50, ride the Bainbridge ferry for the best view of the Seattle skyline.
Our final meal was dinner in the five-star Campagne restaurant, which shares a courtyard with the Inn at the Market. Our hotel window, in fact, overlooked the patio dining area, complete with fountain. The food was excellent. Because neither of us eats seafood, we were limited basically to the beef tenderloin, so even though we had eaten it twice on the train, we ordered it again. Sitting at the table beside us were two women and a man from Atlanta. We started talking about the food and were soon swapping travel stories. They wanted to hear all about the Coast Starlight, and we wanted to hear about Vancouver, where they had just been the day before. I strongly recommended the underground tour, and they recommended taking a seaplane when we went from Vancouver to Victoria.			We always pictured the Space Needle surrounded by highrises, so it surprised us to find it outside downtown. A brief monorail ride takes you to it.
At noon on Tuesday we boarded a bus bound for Vancouver. It took about three and a half hours, including about 30 minutes spent in Customs at the border. We took advantage of the leisurely ride to relax. We had four busy days ahead of us in Vancouver, including an excursion to Victoria, so we wanted to conserve our energy.

Vancouver After another bus connection, we were dropped on the red-carpeted doorstep of the Hyatt Regency . We were spending another $20 a night to stay on the Regency Club floor, 29, and it was worth it. We had a beautiful big corner room with a terrific balcony view, our own concierge down the hall, free passes to the fitness center, and last but certainly not least, complimentary breakfast and afternoon hors d'oeuvres in the floor's cushy lounge. We unpacked and headed to the lounge right away. Renata, a sweet German brunette who was the floor's daytime concierge and in charge of the food service, welcomed us with empty plates, which we promptly piled high with goodies: egg rolls, chicken satay with a peanut dipping sauce, raw veggies, Cajun-spiced corn muffins…
One of the guidebooks we read said that if you have the good fortune to visit Vancouver during a clear, sunny day, you'll be enthralled by the contrast of the glittering metropolis against the backdrop of dense forest. If you visit during a rainy day, when visibility is often down to a hundred yards, you'll be less favorably impressed. I'm so glad our visit was blessed by sunshine and clear skies. All the dark green mountains that surrounded the city seemed close enough to touch.			Boats floating in the Burrard Inlet.

Robson Street
The Melrose Avenue of Vancouver is a street called Robson, about two blocks from the hotel. We strolled up one side and down the other, stopping to look through the unusual shops and inspect the menus of the restaurants. We had eaten so many hors d'oeuvres, we didn't want dinner until after nine o'clock, at which time we found ourselves outside the recently opened Planet Hollywood. We began with one of the specialties of the house: chicken strips breaded with Cap'n Crunch. Eddie got the "L.A. Lasagna," which was two big stuffed and crispy pasta tubes standing up in his plate--maybe it was supposed to look like the twin office towers in Century City. I had a simple and tasty chicken and pesto dish.

Downtown

Downtown Vancouver, which fills a peninsula the same way Manhattan and San Francisco do, is pretty small. You can walk to everything. After a yummy breakfast of cereal, croissants, fruit, cheese, muffins, juice, and coffee in the Regency Club lounge, Eddie and I strolled down one of the clean, wide boulevards to view the remarkable Art Deco Marine Building (1908), which stands on the shores of the Burrard Inlet. We were following the tour outlined in our Fodor's guide, so we walked from historical building to historical building for a couple of hours, ending up on the cobblestone streets of Gastown, Vancouver's birthplace.

The city's most famous landmark, the Hotel Vancouver. Craig took this photo off the balcony of his and Eddie's room at the Hyatt Regency.

Gastown to Chinatown
Gastown was named after the town's first saloonkeeper, Gassy Jack Deighton (I don't want to know how he got the nickname), whose statue now stands where his saloon once did in 1867. We saw the ancient little two-cell jail--or "gaol," as the sign read--and the four-story flatiron Hotel Europe (1908), once the city's finest. On the hour, an antique steam clock standing on a street corner blows its horns. Billows of steam rise out of it through a miniature pipe organ, making music. We were lucky enough to be standing right there when it happened.

Next stop on the tour was Chinatown. Vancouver's is North America's largest. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers were brought over in the 1800s to build the railroads. They proceeded to recreate the architecture of the Canton region of China, a region that's imitated only in Vancouver, not in the Chinatown of any other city. Unfortunately, what the Fodor's guide didn't tell us was that the walk it recommended for getting from Gastown to Chinatown would take us through Vancouver's Skid Row.

You hear so much about how clean Canada is. People cry with wonder, "There's no graffiti, no litter!" But of course it's a big modern city with big modern problems. The business and residential centers are admirably maintained, but in this low-rent part of town we had to walk about three blocks down a street strewn with garbage and lined with junkies and bums. I clutched my camera to my side, and we walked as fast as we could without drawing attention to ourselves. Our friend Greg had visited Vancouver last year, and he said about it, "It's so clean, you can eat off the streets!" Well, in this part of town it looked like people ate off the streets all the time!

Things got nicer in actual Chinatown, so we walked around and saw things like the Guinness Book of World Records' Narrowest Building. It is two stories high, about fifty feet wide, but only five feet deep. Then we rode the one-line subway back to the glitzy part of town, where our hotel was, and we had McPizza (yes!) at McDonald's for a late lunch.

Underground malls must be common in cities where it rains a lot. The first one I ever saw was in Washington, D.C. I was impressed that I could catch the subway under our hotel in Virginia and come up in the mall ten minutes later without ever encountering the elements; it could have been a blizzard outside for all I cared. Vancouver has an immense underground mall anchored by two department stores, Eaton's and The Bay. The mall stretches for several city blocks, and there's everything from movie theaters to gyms to restaurants down there.

On Wheels Stanley Park is North America's largest city park. It occupies an entire island of forests, lakes, and trails northwest of the city. Eddie and I rented bikes one morning at a shop that specialized in both bicycle rentals and espresso drinks, and we wheeled along the perimeter of the island on the wide bike paths. Every hundred yards or so, we dismounted to take pictures. The view of Vancouver across the water was terrific. We could also see North Vancouver, a suburb crawling up the mountain on the other shore of the Burrard Inlet. We saw a sea lion resting on a rock. At a stretch of sandy beach, a red-headed girl took a dip in what must have been extremely chilly water.			Stanley Park from across the water.
We had hoped to eat at one of the city's best restaurants, the Teahouse at Ferguson Point, but when we propped our bikes up against a tree and walked over to read the menu, we found it limited to seafood. Yuck! Well, I guess that's to be expected in Seafood City, which we were alarmed to learn was Vancouver's nickname. It would have been a lovely meal. The Teahouse is the only restaurant in Stanley Park, kind of like how Tavern on the Green is the only restaurant in New York's Central Park.
Just before we reached our starting point on the bike path, we passed an immense, empty public swimming pool surrounded by picnic areas and playgrounds. It had been recently drained, but during the warmer months it is full of saltwater. There were a thousand families and kids everywhere. It was the last week of summer vacation. Next to a lake where swans were lazily crossing from shore to shore, we sat on a bench to await the fly-over of a sleek red seaplane. It was the one we would be taking the next day, and I wanted a shot of it. We had to wait almost an hour, but the picture was worth it, and it was nice just to rest awhile.

Victoria A sleek red seaplane lifted off the water at eight in the morning with us inside it. As luck would have it, it was sprinkling outside. The only rain on the whole trip and it has to happen while we're taking off in a little plane! We gripped the armrests and hoped for the best. At least the view as we flew over the mountains took our mind off the weather. A few minutes over the water and the skies were clear. We were landing in Victoria's harbor thirty minutes later.
Victoria is the capital of British Columbia and models herself after Great Britain. The renovated, historical Downtown is charming. We had a quick look around the lobby and tearoom of the elegant Empress Hotel (1908), where High Tea is still served daily at four o'clock. Proper attire is mandatory, and the cost per person is $29 Canadian, which I think is about $20 U.S.			The Parliament Building in Victoria, British Columbia's capital.
In Vancouver we noticed that all the flags were flown at half mast in honor of Princess Diana, and the same was true about the flags in Victoria. In front of the imposing Parliament Building (1897), the locals had heaped flowers and remembrances upon a statue. The gesture had political implications, I read in the paper. On the forecourt of the Parliament Building are two statues, one of Queen Victoria and one to honor the memory of the Canadian soldiers who died in the Korean War. You'd think an impromptu shrine to Princess Diana would be made out of the Queen Victoria statue, which symbolized the British monarchy, but instead the locals had heaped their flowers and notes on the completely unrelated Korean War memorial fifty feet away. The public's choice was viewed as a snub to the British monarchy.

Tiptoe Through the Tulips We hopped on a tour bus and rode the 17 miles or so out to the spectacular Butchart Gardens. The overcast sky made for perfect photographs of the vast collection of dazzling flowers. Although it was still fairly early in the morning, the place was crawling with Japanese tourists. They wouldn't be so much of a bother if they didn't insist on staying together in packs. We would be strolling down the narrow brick pathways through the gardens and be overcome by two dozen fast-talking, picture-taking Japanese who would nearly push us off the path. These people all traveled from Japan together, so haven't they seen enough of one another? Split up, for goodness' sake!			The Sunken Garden.
When the family limestone quarry was finally tapped out in 1908, Mrs. Butchart began cultivating the hideous pits and ditches the quarry had made in the landscape. She planted thousands of varieties of flowers and plants, and today Butchart Gardens is one of the world's most famous.
Eddie and I crisscrossed back and forth through the different collections, admiring everything. All and all, though, we felt we'd seen everything in about two hours. If you've seen a million beautiful flowers, you've seen 'em all. We were the only passengers on the noon bus back to town. We wanted to explore more of Downtown Victoria and have lunch at one of the many English restaurants we'd noticed earlier. We spent a couple of hours checking out the shops and hangouts and then caught the seaplane back to Vancouver in time to relax by the Hyatt pool before yummy afternoon hors d'oeuvres.			The spouts in this impressive fountain dance like flames. It's constantly changing shape.

Villa del Yummo! Our friend who'd been in Vancouver the year before recommended an Italian restaurant called Villa del Lupo (Home of the Wolf), in a charming converted Victorian home. It was faboo! I had lamb osso buco, which is lamb shanks braised in olive oil, white wine, stock, onions, tomatoes, garlic, carrots, celery and lemon peel. Eddie had beef tenderloin (for the fourth time on the trip!).			A Gourmet magazine readers poll (10/96) ranked Villa del Lupo among Vancouver's 10 best restaurants. 869 Hamilton St., (604) 688-7436. $$$
Then we took a taxi over to a club to sample the local nightlife, passing by a corner bar ablaze with Klieg lights. Vancouver is sometimes referred to as Hollywood North because of the high number of television shows and movies that shoot there, and apparently there was a scene being filmed inside the bar. Maybe it was for one of my favorite programs, The X-Files, which uses Vancouver to stand in for all sorts of American locales. As they are in L.A., the trailers and vans parked around the set were all plain white, so we couldn't tell what was filming.
The next day we had our last breakfast in the Regency Club lounge, tipped Renata, and rode a cab to the airport, where the British Columbian government extorted $10 from each of us before we were allowed on our plane. All international passengers must cough up an "airport improvement tax" before departing. I'm glad I happened to have $20 Canadian on me. On the flight home we flew over the summit of snowy Mount Ranier, and in a few hours we were coasting over Los Angeles. We could make out the Park Labrea in the distance. Home sweet home.