Saturday, June 29, 2019

Family Vacay: Traveling to Seattle & Our AirBnB

We left on a Tuesday. We had afternoon tickets, which is a change of pace from previous flights. Kyle had the day off and I took the three bigger kids to their park playdate camp that morning which goes from 9-12. I took Harpo to our friend's then came back to pack with Kyle and Thomas. Once we were packed and had the van somewhat loaded we went to get the kids and stop at the new taco place in SLP. I had eaten there with the girls the week prior so we wanted to share it with Isaac and Kyle.

We needed to make a quick stop back at home before heading to the airport. We wanted to arrive nice and early to avoid any issues or rush. Quick photo in the parking garage:   

Glad we were early because the line for Sun Country was rather long with their computer check in system down. We waited in line pretty much the entire time, made our way through security, stopped to fill up some waters and boarded the plane right away. The kids were excited to have a solid chunk of iPad time.





Last family trip with baby in arms. We made it a goal to take a trip right before each of the kids turned 2 so we could utilize that free person no needing a ticket. Since he'll be two next week he'll need his own ticket going forward. When the girls were 18 months we went to San Diego. When Isaac was 18ish months we went to Maine. Thomas is one lucky boy because this is his third time traveling. Last year he got to fly to Florida AND Italy. I'm excited to no longer have a squirmy baby in my lap.


We had a nice view flying out of the Twin Cities. This is Lake Nokomis just north of the airport. The same lake I was at the weekend prior doing my mini-tri. It is also the lake where my actually triathlon will take place.


Good view of downtown Minneapolis:


Then we got to see our chain of lakes from above. This is our neighborhood. Here you see Lake of the Isles, the squirmy lake, then Lake Calhoun is right below it.



This is Cedar Lake and you can see our house if you know where you're looking.


Thomas still doing well with the excitement of the plane, but he hadn't had a nap and was quickly heading downhill.








We had five seats in two rows, luckily this plane wasn't full and the woman sitting next to Kyle in the isle seat ahead of me moved to an empty seat so we could have two full rows. It was nice to be able to hand Thomas back and forth. Unlike the girls when they flew at this age and were very content sitting, Thomas was NOT content sitting. He was crabby and wanted to move and get into everything.... real fun ::eye roll::







Flying somewhere over Montana I assume. Not sure what this is.




Snow covered mountains:


Oh buddy, this was not a fun ride. He was super tired. I did get him to finally sleep for about 20 minutes on me, after a scream fest.


We arrived in Seattle! This art display of suitcases was pretty cool.

Kyle getting onto Emma for something. Probably not listening and not walking with us.


We got our checked back and headed to the Link (Seattle's light rail) that would take us downtown.





Had a little family meeting about listening and staying together. The third of many.




It was about a 30 minute train ride to our stop.




Boy this is fun! :-D




We arrived just outside of China Town in the International District.

From here google maps told us to get on the street car. It had said to take the one toward First Hill or something like that. Well after two cars that said Broadway/Denny, we realized they all said broadway/denny and that was the one we needed as it only went to one spot anyway.... waited longer than we needed too. Kinda a rough spot as we were all tired, hungry, and frustrated; and just wanted to get our bags to the house so we could find food and relax. At this point it was only 6:30 Seattle time but on all of our clocks it was 8:30pm and that is way past dinner and well past bedtime for our gang. So you can imagine the drama.  



We managed to get on the street car (this was the ONLY time we rode the street car mind you) Pushed Thomas on in his little stroller and he immediately found the handicap 'lower ramp' button and pushed it. Well because he's a great helper in pushing the door button when we're out and about, but this time we didn't want it pushed. The driver announced after the next stop "please don't push the ramp button unless needed". Which if we were exiting it would have been helpful but we didn't bother pushing it when we got to our stop.

Made it to our stop and had a .8 walk to go to our AirBnB house. Who knew Seattle was SO HILLY! We had no clue, but boy was it a hike to get to our place.




Found a fun tree along the way.

After hauling luggage and listening to whiney kids complain about their legs hurting we finally made it. So thankful we didn't have as much luggage as previous trips. We didn't pack car seats since we didn't rent a car and we only had one large checked back, two wheelie carry ons and then Kyle and I each had a back pack. Oh and Thomas was in the umbrella stroller.

Here was our AirBnB apartment. We had our own enterance through this gate. The owner lived upstairs and had made a little apartment in his basement. We went through the gate, down the steps and through another wooden gate in the back.

We walked in to a pull out table and kitchen on our right. Washer/dryer there as well. He had some fold out chairs we used as well as a card table one night when we cooked at home. Since we were somewhat close to downtown (not walking distance) it was hard finding a place that wasn't super expensive. We were happy with this one. Nothing we wanted to spend all day in, but got the job done for a touch down space to sleep at night, and separate rooms so we COULD sleep.
 
Small hallway with our bedroom on the left, a walk in closet that connected this bedroom to the one the girls slept in. We put Thomas in that space in the pack-n-play they provided for us.

Bathroom was between the kitchen and the living room where Isaac slept.

Here was the living space, a TV hanging on the wall in front of the couch. We had pulled out the bed for Isaac to sleep on but it was flimsy and the bars were fragile so we decided not to risk it breaking with the kids bopping up and down on it. We took the mattress cover that he recommended using on the pull out sofa and put it on the floor for Isaac to sleep on.

This was where the girls slept. It was a cough with a pull out trundle thing to make it a queen sized bed. They slept sideways on it. There was a barn door to close off this room from the living room where Isaac was. It was small and cozy but all we needed. We did discover there was a bus stop just half a block away. Had we known that was the better transportation route we would have taken the link to a different stop to hop on the bus verses getting on the street car. They have a great Seattle transportation app that gave us better routes but I used google maps transportation map for the route there - mistake. It was late for us, we got all the beds made and kyle walked about a block to the only food nearby. It was a fried chicken place. Planned to get mac and cheese as well as a family fried chicken platter. They were out of mac & chz so got some other stuff, which none of the kids would eat. They complained about the crunchy stuff on the outside of the chicken, haha. Makes me laugh because that's a good thing they don't like fried chicken.

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