Seattle - we made it!

Seattle skyline
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Finally made it...

Now then, if you're an avid fan of this travel blog, you'll notice that I seem to have taken a crazy route from Victoria to Seattle.  This is not the case.  I am not crazy.  It is merely a technical hitch in this software, and I am assured that it is under investigation.  So now you can sleep tight.  If you're really interested, the route was as follows:

Scenery and seafood

Seattle Chinatown
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Ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles, bus from Port Angeles to Sequim, bus from Sequim to Port Townsend, bus from Port Townsend to Poulsbo, bus from Poulsbo to Bainbridge Ferry Terminal, ferry from Bainbridge to Seattle.  Yes we could have taken the Clipper, but that was way more exciting and super cheap - the buses came to a total of about $3.50 each, and the ferry only charged in one direction, assuming that everyone who takes it one way will automatically take it back.  Luckily they charge westbound.  Ha ha, look at us beating the system!

Rattlesnake ridge
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Anyways, I digress, I'm in Seattle remember.  Anyways, got off the ferry, and onto another bus to our hotel.  Yeah, turns out it's a motel.  Oh well, I'm sure it'll be lovely.  Yes, a smoking room will have to do.  Nice.  Dumped our bags and hopped quick smart back into town!

On first impressions, downtown Seattle is not that nice.  Not that the city itself isn't nice, it's fine, but the streets are overrun with homeless people, and an awful lot of begging goes on.  It's quite a sorry sight.

Ha ha I have the crabs claws!!
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We headed to the world famous Pike Place Market, but it was gone 5, so most places were shut.  After a bit of a wander down the pier, Mike decided he was hungry, so it was off to Quiznos, where we sat playing scrabble for an hour (well you can't play tourist all of the time!).  After that, we took the free trolley through town and on to Chinatown.

The thing about some Americans is that it's often difficult to tell if they're nuts, or just really friendly.  So if a woman walks up to you and asks you what you're looking for, and you offer half an answer in order to sound polite, and you tell her that you were looking for somewhere to eat (I wasn't hungry when we went to Quiznos).  So she tells you that she knows loads of good places, and if we like she'll take us.  Now is she crazy, and is she gonna take us down a dark alley and do nasty things?  Unlikely, it's about 6.30 in the evening, in broad daylight on a fairly busy street.  Or is she just trying to be really friendly, helping out two people who were clearly tourists?  In the end we figured she was just being friendly, if a bit odd, but aired on the side of caution, taking her advice on a general direction of good restaurants, and then parting company.

No really, I love the motel
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As it turned out, we should have been much more afraid of our waitress.  Found a nice little restaurant, and had some dumplings, a few beers, and a very pleasant long chat.  Upon paying our bill, we asked the young lady who had served us to point us in the direction of a particular bar, Howl at the Moon.  I had been to one (not realising it was a chain bar) in New Orleans, and had had a great night.  We showed it to her on our little map of downtown.  As far as we could see, it was only a couple of blocks away, but we weren't 100% sure where the restaurant was located.  But like I say, it turns out the waitress was nuts.  Either that or she had only arrived in Seattle herself that day, or maybe had never seen a map before.  After turning it upside down and the right way around again 4 times, she suddenly declared that it was very very far away.  "Really?  How long will it take us to walk there?"  "30 mins.  Maybe 20 if you walk very fast."  Seriously, it was only about 3 blocks away.  We thanked the crazy lady and left.

Ricky B loves his clam chowder!
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In the end we just called into a dingy little bar on the way home.  We got directions for the next day, and had a beer.  There were little tickets in a dispenser behind the bar, and Mike's curiosity got the better of him, and he bought 2.  It turns out they were a lottery game, you just peel off a label and see what you get.  We got nothing, which was highly disappointing, given the $1000 and $10,000 prizes that had been scratched off as already won.  So I decided to give it one more go, and bought another 2.  Mike peeled his off - nothing.  Imagine my surprise and delight when, on peeling away the label, I found a winning strike through the symbols, just like the bartender had said I needed to win!!  I won!!  I had actually won on the lottery ticket!!  I was rich!!

The famous Pike Place Market
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I won a dollar.

Oh well, I was still very happy with my win.  Elated, we headed home.

Next morning, it was up and out early.  Hold on now, I've not told you why yet.  Ok, let's go back a few days here, to the boats in Vancouver.  Remember Clint?  Not sure if I mentioned him actually.  Well he was another friend of Mike's from when he was travelling before.  Clint's from Seattle, and had said to Mike to get in touch when he got there.  So Mike had done the day we got there, and we had arranged to go hiking.  Clint had said we'd be out for an hour or so, so we figured we'd go early, then get back, shower, and go meet the other two (we hadn't seen them in over 24 hours!!).  So like I say, up and out early, and headed to East Point park and ride to meet him.  "Hey guys, ready for a day on the mountains?"  Oops, I guess Mike misheard the bit about the hour or so...  So we picked up a sandwich in Starbucks, met Clint's wife Sarah, and his friends Pat and Clara, and set off for Rattlesnake trail.  It was a great morning, we hiked for about an hour (I guess that's where they got their wires crossed) up to the top, and were treated to some fabulous views of the Seattle countryside.  We spent a while chatting at the top and admiring the landscape, then headed back down.  That's when my legs knew all about the run I had done a couple of days previosly!  Man it's easy to get unfit quickly!  We drove on a bit further to a beach, and had a bit of a picnic, which was nice.  After that it was back to Clint's for a few beers, then back to the Motel to meet Rick and Nicky.

More pretty views
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We went for a teryaki down the road, then to a pretty dingy bar near our motel.  Jumped on a bus downtown, and decided to go with Clint's advice on the stamps.  Basically you paid for a stamp which gave you free entry to a group of bars.  We started off in some Rock stylee place, which was pretty empty, so we left and went to the next one, New Orleans, a blues bar (obviously).  After that it was on to a more popular dancy place.  We had noticed a lot of Redsox fans in town, and there were a group of them in the bar.  Given that we were now hardcore fans (we were in Fenway Park, for goodness sake!) I thought I should keep us updated on how the season was going for us.  So I got chatting to a group of them (turns out we lost).  I was telling one of the guys about our tour of the ground, I swear, he nearly cried when I told him we had gotten field access.  I guess we really did luck out that day.  Next stop on our list of bars was a Heavy Metal spot, then on to (hurray!) Howl at the Moon.  It was just as crazy as I remembered it.  The barman was a bit of a loon.  One of the lads got a round of shots in, and when I told him I was having Jeagar instead of Tequila, Travis our bartender told me mine was on him, and he did a shot with me!  Anyways, we all had a good laugh, and Nicky and I ended up dancing on stage in front of the two grand pianos that are the Howl at the Moon signature.  My god I bet we looked good.

More pretty views, and some scenery(!)
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Day 3 in Seattle, and it was time to pack up again.  We checked out, left our bags in the motel, and headed downtown.  We didn't have a lot of time (we were up a bit late after quite a late night), so we went to Pike Place Market to have a look for these fish.  Anyone who worked with me and saw the promotional videos they had on graddie training for - I don't know what for actually, maybe having fun in the workplace? - will know what I'm talking about.  It's basically a fishmonger, but with a difference, with lots of audience participation and throwing of fish.  To be honest we didn't really see that much cause no one was really buying any fish, but it was nice to see after seeing it on the tele.

Rick decided that he couldn't walk past all the cafes and restaurants selling clam chowder, so we arranged to meet him down by the pier, and headed off in search of The Crab Pot.  It was a kind of novelty restaurant that Pat had told us about, where they pretty much chuck a load of seafood on a piece of waxpaper on your table, give you a wooden board and mallet, and let you at it.  I wasn't particularly happy about smashing up crabs, particularly as I had seen the poor blighters swimming around minutes earlier as I was being shown to my table, but I can assure you it was a much more pleasant seafood experience that the one in Boston!

Fed and watered, we didn't have much time to do anything else, so after a quick trip to an internet cafe, we headed back to the motel to pick up our bags.  Luckily the bus to the airport went from just down the street, so we headed up to catch it.  We ended up bombing it down the street cause it was already sitting there, but when we got to the stop the bus woman didn't open the doors, as it wasn't due to leave for another 10 mins.  So we sat around for a while, until she started up the engine.  The silly mare was about to drive off, when we banged on the door.  She didn't look best pleased about that, and when we asked her if we could get on the bus, she none too politely informed us that it went from a stop about 3 miles down the road!!  She was actually not going to let us on!!  Eventually she did, but we just couldn't get that smile out of her!!  It turns out none of the other customers could either - she even tried to refuse a guy on the bus cause he was 2c short of a $3.50 bus fare.  Dizzy bint.

Anyways it turns out I shouldn't have slagged her off cause our flight to San Fran was delayed by 3 hours.  Dammit!

Click here for the Seattle photos