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Published: December 10th 2015
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I stayed in The Green Tortoise Hostel last time I was in Seattle seven years ago and in my opinion it’s still the best hostel I’ve stayed in. I’m not sure what it is, but something about the atmosphere in that place makes people a lot more welcoming (this may have something to do with the designated weed smoking room at the back of the common room). Within two minutes of my 11pm arrival I was playing Cards against Humanity with a random assortment of Swiss, Germans, Austrians and a guy from Cambridge. If you've never played it before, it’s a really offensive and hilarious card game in which everyone matches a different answer card to a statement card. Funniest one wins (although one or two of the answers were lost on some of the non native English speakers).
There was a hostel run tour to Bainbridge Island the next day which I tagged along on. Bainbridge couldn’t be any further from Seattle if it tried. It has the feel of a small leafy harbor town. Our guide AJ (who was hungover from the previous night bar crawl) gave us a quick and quiet tour of the town and went
off to get ice cream and coffee. A few of us went for a great lunch at a seafood restaurant and jumped on the ferry back to the city.
In the evening someone had arranged to meet a friend at a carnival themed bar on Capitol Hill called Unicorn in which you can buy a drink called Unicorn Jizz and play on old arcade games or pinball tables. It even came complete with an adult claw game filled with an assortment of sex toys, mixed in with the usual stuffed toys and my little pony's. Despite it being a fairly quiet night I still managed to get quite drunk.
I woke up with my head throbbing, filled myself up on coffee and fried egg sandwiches and it took a while to remember that I’d signed up to a walking tour of the Pike Place Farmers Market which conveniently was just across the road from the hostel. If you haven’t heard of the market you will have probably heard of the
">fishmongers who throw the fish between each other. The tour turned out to be absolutely fascinating, I won’t go into it but the rules governing how the place is run are amazing. The tour ended
at the famous gumwall which, as the name suggests, is a wall covered in chewing gum. Apparently it’s the second most unhygienic visitor attraction (after the Blarney Stone).
I spent the rest of my time in Seattle wondering aimlessly around the city, which is one of my favorite things to do, although I hadn’t remembered just how steep some of the hills are. If I hadn’t been doing a half marathon in a couple of days I might have gone and done some hill training (probably not).
The Boltbus drivers 30 minute history lesson as we drove into the city.
Hanging around in the hostel chatting to some great people.
Considering Seattle is so famous for its coffee, the coffee at the hostel tasted like it was dredged from a fishpond.Chatting to a death metal promoter at the bus station, at first I thought she was a cool goth but it turned out she was a right wing, white supremacist.