Time Travel to Seattle!

We were sitting in Seoul's Incheon airport yesterday afternoon, waiting for our flight to Seattle. About a hour before boarding, I got an email from our couchsurfing host in Seattle informing us that her sister and niece had been in a car accident and that she was not going to be able to host us.

So all of a sudden we were going to be arriving in Seattle, with nowhere to stay!

I've learned that it normally takes a minimum of three days to successfully set up a couchsurfing stay, so attempting to contact other hosts with a last minute request is pretty much pointless. However, most large cities have a couchsurfing group where you can post a public last minute request if you're stranded.

So that's what I did. We got on the plane in Seoul, hoping that when we landed in Seattle 10 hours later there might be an invitation from a host who had seen our plea for help.

View of Seoul.

The seatback monitor with all of the statistics.

 I don't think we've ever seen such a high ground speed and tailwind!

The flight went very well. We left Seoul at 6:00pm Thursday, had a 10 hour flight, and arrived in Seattle at noon on Thursday! Travelling back in time!

Made it through customs and immigration without any issues at all, in fact Seattle airport was very well set up compared to the ridiculous situation we experienced in Houston last April.

We found a spot to set up the laptop and get on the Seattle airport free wi-fi to check email.

Sure enough, there was a response to our emergency request! And very coincidentally, it turned out that this particular host was dropping off another couchsurfer at the airport that morning, and going to a nearby funeral around noon. I called him right away from a pay phone (they still exist!) and he picked us up right at the airport around 1:45. Wow. Sometimes things just work out.

So we're staying three nights with an older gentleman in a big old house Seattle's north end, and then the original couchsurfer we had lined up will be back on Sunday and we'll move over to her place, which is only a mile and a half away from where we are!

We managed to stay up until 10:30pm last night, but we were zonked after getting very little sleep on the plane. We're in a big old house near the university and our older host Lauren has three younger (20's) roommates so we were up meeting them all and of course much of the discussion revolved around travel.

We slept until 9:00am (!!) and now we're going to hop on a bus and explore some of downtown Seattle. It's overcast and drizzling and calling for a high of 55F (13C), but we expected that. Typical Seattle weather!

Seattle, as seen from Gas Works Park and Lake Union.