As soon as Mark does his preview trip in Seattle, I can then be more final about the resulting itinerary. He has recommended we ride the First Hill Line in only one direction, given that the one trip will take seemingly forever. It does feed to a LINK light rail station headed in the correct direction anyhow. Since the streetcars follow the same streets through Seattle in both directions, nothing new would be seen by retracing our tracks back to the International District. We have the luxury of a transfer into the LINK at Capitol Hill, and then only need to ride 1 more station to UW. The other question is, when we get to the UW end of the line, which is underground, do you wish to come out of the system and up to street level to see the neighborhood, or just go back onto LINK to head in the other direction? The difference would be a few minutes more or less that had to be programmed into our itinerary.
For Portland, I think the circular Streetcar Loops, while each one will bring us back to exactly where we started, do run mostly on one-way street couplets, so the scenery from each would be a little different. I therefore think we should do both. As the itinerary now calls for, we have zero official transit riding on Thursday evening after we arrive on the Cascades 513. We could possibly do one of the Loops in 1 direction that evening, which would then save some time the next morning, Friday, when we would still have to ride MAX
Orange Line, and the other Streetcar Loop we didn't do the night before. But I would like consensus on this from our participants as well. Doing what was just suggested does save time on Friday, however it may require purchasing another Day Pass for Thursday to cover this trip as well as if any are needed to get to & from wherever we choose to have dinner.
Note too that if your hotel is east of the Willamette River and you've brought your luggage aboard the streetcar, AND we do this after dinner and you don't mind not completing the loop to where we started from, then a Streetcar trip might take you within a block or two of your hotel and thus you would not need to return to downtown to catch MAX Light Rail.
I await your responses as to what would be the most prudent and enjoyable options for you. Let's review the questions again so you don't glance over them and think they don't apply to you.
- In Seattle, do you want to spend time at the UW LINK endpoint station seeing the area at the surface, or just reverse direction underground and quickly leave the area?
- In Seattle, are you comfortable with riding the First Hill Streetcar in only one direction (from Occidental to Capitol Hill - Broadway/Denny) or would you like to ride it the other way as well?
- In Portland, would you be willing to do one of the Streetcar loops on Thursday evening, before or after dinner depending on time? This costs us more ultimately, but it saves time on Friday morning when we also have to get to lunch and do one of the loops and the MAX Orange Line to Milwaukie.... all before getting to Union Station well in advance of our Coast Starlight departure.