Sometimes your travel plans are foiled by crowds. And sometimes your travel plans are foiled by…Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis.

On a nice July day in 2012 I was in Seattle for a business trip. After my coworker and I settled into our hotel we decided to do a little site-seeing while we got lunch before our first meeting. We headed down to Pike Place Market. After we had lunch, we noticed there were a lot of people…and more people streaming in. It became hard to shop and move about the market, and the sellers at first had no idea why as it wasn’t normally that busy. And it was strange, the people weren’t shopping or eating, they were just standing, as if waiting for something. We gave up, deciding to leave since it was impossible to really experience the market. As we left we heard people cheering and bunching together straining to see something.

But it was good that we left early, as traffic in the downtown area was awful. The client we were meeting was a little late also because of the downtown traffic. After the meeting we learned the cause of the commotion: Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis came to Pike Place Market to serve coffee to promote their upcoming movie “The Campaign”.

Sadly, we only had one day in Seattle. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to return…without any celebrity interruptions.

Crowd in Seattle

The crowd gathering at Pike Place Market.

Travel Missteps

Travel Missteps is an every-other week series on how sometimes part of the journey is making mistakes and getting lost.