Seattle

 A bit of a lower key day today....first order of business was a bit of business.  We had applied for Global Entry status with US Customs a month or so ago.   This lets you bypass most of the security at airports - and sense we will be traveling quite a bit, we thought it would be worth it.  You have to submit to a background check and provide documents to prove who you are....that all completed, we were given the go-ahead to schedule an appointment for an in-person interview at a US Customs and Border Control location.  Our only closeby options were Charlotte airport or Wilmington.  Neither one of those had appointments available.  Very strange, but we checked the appointments at the Seattle airport and we got that scheduled easily.  So today was the day - a nice walk towards the light rail station thru the downtown busy morning.  

 

We boarded the light rail to take us back to the airport.  Unfortunately, we had boarded the train in the wrong direction!  Silly mistake - easily fixable by a quick hop-off and hop-on the correct direction.....

For some reason, the train was not very busy today.

 

Quite the long trek but we found the Customs office.  Easy peasy interview.....not really sure why we needed to do it but we're all set now.  Hopefully we'll breeze thru security from now on.

 After the interview, it was time for lunch....I had Chinatown on my list of places to visit so we hopped off the train at the entrance.

 

 I was intrigued by the fact that the road signs were in both English and Chinese....just thought it was a bit odd 

 We quickly picked out a restaurant that looked "authentic"....definitely was since we were the only pasty people in the crowded restaurant.

My normal order - Szechuan chicken....it was very good and the hot tea was very nice.   

Unfortunately, the walkabout we had after lunch was not as amazing as I was expecting.  I love a good Chinatown, with outside markets and odd Chinese stuff.....but that really wasn't there.  It was just a few blocks of Chinese shops, obviously very authentic but not very "tour-able" as I didn't want to go inside and just be nosy without buying anything.  So we wandered back to the train with full bellies.  We had a day-long pass so we used it to ride all the way to the small town of Redmond.  We had read about a river trail there but never really found it....back on the train without even a photo.....

The final thing I had on the list was to go to Kerry Park where they say you can have a wonderful view of the Seattle skyline.  It did not disappoint....but it was a very, very steep climb up side streets and stairs.... I snapped several beautiful shots. 

 And then we tried a few "holding something up that is really in the distance" shots.  We quickly decided we weren't very good at it.....caught a city bus back down the hill to our apartment.  Only 13,500 steps today since we had a good bit of train/bus travel.