Seattle on the cheap

Seattle from the boat
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Patrice and I arrived in Seattle in the morning after a complex but relatively hassle free journey from Victoria. In an attempt to save some cash we decided not to get the clipper ferry back as it costs around $80 and instead took two boats and four local buses with a combined cost of about $25. Not bad eh? Well we did have to get up around 5am but after my lavish spending on technology the day previous I thought I deserved some penance. Thanks again to Theresa who insisted on getting up with us at such an ungodly hour to drop us off at the ferry port!

Top of Rattlesnake Ridge
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When we arrived at our pretty grim Motel, we headed straight back to downtown Seattle to have a look around. There were a couple of things I was pretty keen to do in Seattle:

1) Visit Bruce Lee´s grave

2) See the 1st and original Starbucks

3) Go up in the space needle

Seafood!
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4) Meet some Fraiser cast

I managed none of these. The closest we got to acheiving any were wandering past different starbucks saying "Do you reckon it´s this one?" - "Not sure, maybe".

Downtown Seattle seemed nice enough although quite well stocked with bums. We went to Chinatown and got some grub and planned to goto a nearby bar called Howl at the Moon that Patrice knew of. We asked the owner of the restuarant who seemed to think it was at least 30 mins walk away and that the area we would be walking through was a bit shady at this time of night. She was clearly insane as it was only a couple of blocks away, we headed the shady warning tho and decided just to goto to the first place we found rather than wander the streets holding up a map and looking like lost tourists. The bar was a bit of a locals haunt but the barmaid was friendly enough and helped us work out some bus timetables for the next day as we were meeting up with Clint for a Hike in the morning.

Reminds me of feeding animals in the zoo.
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Clint was with us for the speedboating in Vancouver a few days back but he actually lives in Seattle. We´d met a few years previously while trekking in Laos when I was backpacking in South East Asia. We arranged to meet up and for a hike with his wife, Sarah and a couple of their friends, Pat and Cara at a mountain about 20 minutes outside of Seattle. The hike to Rattlesnake Ridge (I didn´t see any) was about an hour through some beautiful scenery and the views from the top were fantastic. When we got back down, we headed to a nearby river where you can go for a swim and we had a picnic. The water was pretty damn cold but it was refershing after the hike and the sun quickly dried you after.

We returned back to meet up with Rick and Nikki in the early evening who had taken the Clipper over in the morning (losers) and headed to the pub/club area at Pioneer Square. They have deal on at the weekend where you can pay for a stamp which gets you into around 8 or 9 places, most of which are playing live music. We managed to get around about 6 or 7 I think and ended up at Howl at the Moon (where Patrice had wanted to go on our first night). They have two huge pianos facing each other and duel it off, musically like. The atmosphere was great and the drinks in large measures. They had some weird alcohol jelly things in large syringes which proved fairly popular, with the girls. Moments later they were both up dancing on the stage like loons.

The next morning we went back downtown for a look around the famous Pike Place Market and stopped for some fresh sea food at a place Clint had recommended call the Crab Pot. The food was great, basically they empty a tub of assorted seafood onto your table and give you all a hammer and board to break open the shells. It´s all very messy, tasty and fun. I was hoping to get to Capitol hill to check out the celeb graves but we didn´t have enough time :( we had to rush to the airport for our flight to San Francisco... which turned out 3 hours delayed. Awesome!

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