Day 23 – Boeing to Vancouver

Vancouver Harbor at sunset

We checked out of our hotel on the south side of Seattle and headed 30 miles north of Seattle to tour the Boeing factory. We had a few minutes to kill so we took a detour through the University of Washington campus. Very pretty and right on the lake. In fact it’s supposed to be one of 4 or 5 schools where you can take a boat the football game. I think Tennessee is another.

Canada Place (cruise ship terminal)

As an engineer, I found the Boeing tour interesting. Jeanne, maybe not so much. The factory itself is the largest building in the world, measured by volume. They are currently making 767s, 747-8s, 777s and their newest 787 Dreamliners on 4 different assembly lines. No photos are allowed on the tour so you will have to take my word that the factory was enormous. In business terms, I think they said they make about $1B of product each week from that plant and they still have a huge backlog of orders. It takes over a year to get one of their latest planes built from the time you order it to delivery.

Steam Clock in Gas Town

We crossed the 5,000 mile mark on the trip and also hit our furthest point when we arrived in Vancouver. Traffic was some of the worst we have seen on the trip and the border crossing took about 20 minutes, so not that quick either. At the advice of the person who checked us in, we took the metro into downtown Vancouver. That actually worked well and only cost $2.75 CAD (about $2.50 USD). Much better than in Philly. We saw the Olympic cauldron from the winter Olympics held here in 2010 and walked along the waterfront. We stopped for dinner overlooking the water and did a quick walk through Gas Town to see the steam clock before heading back to our room.

Couple of things that we quickly noticed about Vancouver. Its population, at least where we were, was about 90% Asian. Also the downtown section is very clean for the most part but on the flip side, they have a very large population of homeless and beggars as well.