Up at 4:45am to walk to the bus stop, then get a bus into Seattle to King Street Station. What a God-awful dump that place is. They are supposed to remove the false ceiling and walls to renovate it to the classic old time stations, but we'll see when that will happen. Right now it looks like something out of the Soviet era.

So, for the good part, the scenery is spectacular! Eighty percent of the trip is along water, I missed sitting on the left on the way up, but coming back, I sat on the right for the sunset/water view.

Now, for the bad part. The train stopped around Mt Vernon because the conductor had to manually switch the signal. Ok, that was no big deal, but when we got within 30 minutes of Vancouver with the city in site, the train stopped for the same thing. Then, the passengers start grumbling, this one 50-ish man said to his wife "They're switching signals manually, that's what your dad used to do." Then the voice over the intercom (sighing) "The conductor has to switch the signals manually, we'll have to stop like this about 5 or 6 more times." Now this isn't Amtrak's fault, it was the switches, and especially since it happened on Canadian soil. Jeez, are they getting lax over their rail too?

So, a four hour trip from 7:45am to 11:45 am turns into five hours. Then to top it all off, when we finally pull up to the platform, the train stops and we're sitting there. They wouldn't let us off. Someone said they were taking checked luggage off the train first, but daytrip passengers like me didn't have any checked luggage, I could've gotten off and been through Canadian customs and on the streets. Plus, it's not like they were screening the baggage for explosives, or had bomb sniffing dogs and stuff like that. We just sat on the train, the grumbling growing louder.
Then they announce, to get through customs on the way back, it's best to get back to the train at 4:30, so when I hit the street I had from 1 to 4:30 pm to see Vancouver, British Columbia. Moral of the story, make Vancouver an over night two day trip.

So I race around hopping cabs from the station to Stanley Park to Gastown back to the train station.

The ride back, and this is a miracle, we didn't stop once, unless it was station stops or to let US Customs inspect the train. We got back to Seattle at 10:04, only four minutes late. When we got off the train, there were huge fireworks going off over the baseball and football stadiums in Pioneer Square. I said, "Amtrak's on time, now that's an occasion for fireworks!" LOLOLOL!
It was for a big parade for Seafair celebrations. When I tried to get my city bus back home, Metro didn't post a reroute sign at the 2nd and Jackson stop. I finally called and they said the bus was in the tunnel! So, I get back to my place in the burbs, at midnight.

You're right, Seattle's King Street station is a God-awful place. Another thing you reported was the ineffecient transit system. I cannot believe how unreliable it is. Probably worse off than Amtrak when their buses don't work together or change routes every other day (i.e. the bus tunnel).

I think Seattle is an embarassment to the Pacific NW...