Seattle; Wednesday, 27 April, 2022

I’d travelled to an airport hotel the previous evening, in part so that I could get the mandatory Covid test done and the rest of the paperwork filed to be able to checkin early, and partly so I could work out of the hotel in the morning and only have to take a half days leave.

With work finished, my laptop powered down, and officially on leave, I checked out of the hotel and headed over to Terminal 5 to complete checkin by dropping off my bags and head through to the lounge for a couple of hours before the flight.

The flight pushed back on time, just after 15:30 and with a quick taxi we were airborne only a few minutes later, which marked the start of the long, long afternoon. The flight was due to be 9 and a half hours long – though a helpful tail breeze meant that we only took 9 hours, but with an 8-hour time difference it was 16:50 when we landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, even though my body knew it was already gone midnight.

I’ve found entry into the US to be a hit and miss affair, some times you wait in line for nearly 2 hours to clear immigration, other times – like tonight – you’re through immigration and standing at the baggage belt less than 5 minutes after getting off the plane. With the bags coming round only a couple of minutes later I was out of the airport and on a tram into town barely half an hour after landing.

I caught the tram into the centre of Seattle and walked the block or so from the station to my hotel where I checked in and headed up to my room. By now it was still only 18:30 and light for the best part of another 2 hours. I was feeling absolutely shattered, but knew that going to bed now would be a very bad idea.

Thankfully there were things I could do as I had planned out the list of places I wanted to visit and noted which ones required pre-purchased tickets or reserved time slots. Given the potential for it all to go wrong if the Covid test had come back positive the day beforehand I’d not actually made the bookings, so I was able to spend quite a bit of time getting everything booked in and reserved for the following days.

By the time I’d finished that the sun was starting to set, so I spent a little bit of time reading before turning in for the night just after 9pm.