Seattle ( days 11/12)

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Seattle is a very industrialised city developed around the Puget Sound with some very impressive scenery- it is quiet different from Portland with cycling less obvious and little specific facilities provided to allow for safe riding. It has an good public transport system with combination of bus, street car, tram and light rail and of course the mono rail from the Seattle Centre to down town shopping centres. There is a section of the city downtown where light rail and buses uses a dedicated transit tunnel which works very well.

We enjoyed the best experience we had since coming to the US when we visited the Chihuly Glass and Garden Museum- the works of a local US glass artisan-Dale Chihuly- on permanent display in a new facility close to the Seattle Needle ( telecom / sky tower)- I have included some extra photos in the blog to give you a sense of the collection. We also visited the Pike Street markets which are world famous, the Seattle Needle and the Klondike Gold Rush Museum. I have taken to have a different US beer each night with my dinner and to date the following named beers have been consumed:

- Millers pale ale, Anchor steam and gold pale ales, Sierra Pale ale, Mirrors Ponds pale ale, Mannings Pale ale,IPA Elysian Immortal pale ale, Pyramids "Hefewizen" wheat ale and tonight before preparing this blog from Victoria in Canada- Blue truck pale ale and Phoneix golden amber ale.

You can see from this that life is very hard on holidays and having left the US today(for now) and got the ferry ( Victoria Clipper) from Seattle to Victoria, I am staying in a hotel built over 104 years ago designed by an architect called Rattenbury - not sure if there is a connection. Talk to you again in a few days about our time in Victoria.

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Photos

Seattle space needle 21 July 2013
still doing some media over here!

Chihuly-1
This glass work piece is about 2 m high

Chihuly-2
this glass work piece covers a basket ball court in area

chihuly-3
another big glass work piece - hope you can appreciate the colours

Chihuly-4
This is like a carpet rolled out but in glass - 2m x 3m - stunning

chihuly-5
This is the centre piece of the collection with a special glass house built to contain a massive floral display in glass.

Seattle view-1
a mix of new and old buildings in a bustling city

Seattle needle
this tower was built in 1962 and is similar to our Black Moutain Tower except it is linked to the city by a mono rail and attracts lots of people.

Seattle view-2
this is a view of the wider Seattle taken from the needle.

Transit tunnel
This underground transit tunnel works well and is used by both light rail and buses - so these is hope for Canberra yet.

transit tunnel-2
this shows a light rail train in the transit tunnel.