I have the great pleasure to participate in this years Docker Conference at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. This is going to be a little personal journal about the conference.

Saturday, June 19th, 2016

I get up very early to catch my flight with Alaska Airlines which leaves Austin airport at 7 am. I hate to be stressed and thus I’d rather be early than late. I arrive at the airport nearly 2 hours in advance and check-in at this time is quick and painless. I think to myself: “why didn’t you stay in bed for another hour or so…”. But that’s me.

The plane leaves the terminal in time and the flight is smooth and event less. It’s a direct flight in a brand new Boeing 737. Each seat has power outlets but mine doesn’t work for some reason. Never mind, the battery of my laptop has enough juice to bring me through the 4 hours of flight. I use the time in the plane to write a full blog post about containers and why I think they make a big difference. You can read the post here.

At the Tacoma airport in Seattle I take a shuttle bus which after a 30 minutes ride deposits me directly at the door to my hotel downtown. I have a room at the official DockerCon hotel, the Sheraton Seattle Hotel.

After booking in I was so hungry – I had not eaten anything since I got up at 4 am – that I decided to grab some early lunch. Yelp directed me to this wonderful chowder place at Pike’s market. There was a considerable queue of people already at 10:45 am, 15 minutes before they opened. I finally got my chowder. It was delicious. I can highly recommend this little hole to everyone travelling to Seattle. After that I passed some time walking through the many nice stores at Pike’s Market. I knew this place from my last visit but it is always worth returning here.

Next I wanted to visit some places that I had not had an opportunity to see before. First stop on my list was the Seattle Public Library it is a gorgeous and architecturally unique building. My girls that are true book worms would love this place too. They have a huge selection of books and a lot of space to learn and play too. Definitely worth the visit.

Now, the subsequent stop was at the Columbia Tower nearby. It is the largest building in Seattle at this time. There is an observation platform on the 73rd floor and it is publicly accessible. the fee is about $12 per adult. The view from this height is magnificent. One can see the whole city of Seattle in its full beauty or ugliness (depending which direction one is looking). If the weather is nice then one can also see all the mountains in the background. It’s definitely a place I highly recommend. The local draft beer that I enjoyed up in the air tasted so good given this gorgeous view.

Finally I had to do something to improve my knowledge about the history of Seattle. Thus I decided to book a tour with Bill Speidel. This was 75 minutes of information, jokes, fun and walking through the various underground tunnels of the city. At the end of the tour my feet started to hurt from walking many miles through the streets of this lovely city.

As the last goal of the day I had on my list was to eat some great fresh seafood. Yelp guided me to this nice Oyster Bar where I had an excellent sampler with a fresh and crunchy baguette and a glass of white wine. All this while sitting at the bar and watching the staff preparing the many plates with oysters, crabs, shaved fish and many other delicatesses.