Sleepless in Seattle!!

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‘Where are we off to this time?’ I asked Roisin. This is not as strange as it sounds as in the next twenty-four months we have at least thirteen trips booked to various corners of the Globe and also, I just wanted to get this blog started by using a few golden oldie puns!

‘Alaska’, Roisin replied rather surprisingly calm and not at all thinking it was strange that I didn’t know where our next trip was despite having just returned from Asda with a Fist full of Dollars (minus the cheroot, cowboy hat, poncho, a horse and designer stubble!!)

‘Juneau?’

‘Yes, Alaska!’. Roisin repeated

‘Yes, but Juneau?’ This could have gone on all night but Roisin, not wanting to repeat herself said, ‘The 49^th State of the USA’.

‘Aah, so the dollars will come in useful, then?’ I responded with a cheeky smile.

**NB** This gag doesn’t work unless you know that Juneau is the state capital of Alaska!!!

This trip is a seven-day cruise to Alaska, another place that has been on our bucket list for some time. We start our adventure by spending a few days in Seattle before boarding the Ruby Princess. Our first stop is Juneau before sailing to the ports of Ketchikan and Skagway. There will also be some scenic cruising among that lot as well as whale watching. We will stop at Victoria which is the capital of British Colombia (Canada) before returning to Seattle. We then will fly down to San Francisco to visit some friends for a few days before flying home. We may even get to go to the odd baseball game whilst we’re over there. Either way it’s going to be a busy few weeks.

Incidentally in two years’ time, after we have completed all our planned trips, we intend to take a gap year. Does this make us the only human beings in the history of time that will have taken a gap year in reverse… AWAY FROM travelling??!!

Our outward journey was pretty uneventful and involved a 9hr 50 min flight from London Heathrow to Seattle. As the flight pushed back at 09:25 in the morning, our travel plans involved an overnight stay in the Premier Inn at Heathrow’s Terminal 4. This allowed us to leave the hotel at 05:50 to ensure we checked in the usual several hours before the gate closed.

US immigration was one of the slickest we have experienced. An usher was on every corner of the airport corridors, directing us to the Customs and Immigration counters. Visa cases and first-time travellers to the US had to join the long line whereas providing you have entered the US before on your current passport, y’all joined the automated line. This consisted of numerous machines which scanned your passport, took finger prints and a photo before issuing a printout to be taken to the nice Immigration official. Within ten minutes of joining the queue we were collecting our luggage from the carousel.

The journey from the airport to our accommodation also went without a hitch. Normally, where we can, we always try to take public transport from airports to our final destination. There are a few exceptions to this rule, for example if the route is too complicated, inconvenient or we’re too tired then we may think about taking a cab. However, we had only been on a ten-hour flight and we were sat down for most of that journey so we’d had plenty of rest!!

The $3 journey on the light railway from the Central terminal of Seattle International took just over half an hour. During this time, we passed what is my favourite name for a district to date; SODO. This is short for SOuth DOwntown. Do you see what they’ve done there? Later that day, I noticed a local bus, number 56, with the word ALKI scrolling across the top. I assumed it is the name, albeit, an unfortunate name of a district of Seattle. If this is one of those composite words such as SODO someone at the council has a bizarre sense of humour or else it may have been a bus for a special kind of person!!!

We alighted at Pioneer Square and crossed over on to 3^rd and James where we took the trolleybus to within one hundred and fifty yards of our cottage. I say cottage, it is, in reality a converted outhouse in someone’s back yard!! This will be our home for the next three nights. The cottage is self-contained, the exterior yard provided a modicum of privacy and was a mix of block paving and wooden decking that combine to provide a pleasant patio area. The accommodation comprised of a modest sized room with dining table and bed. A compact kitchenette separated the shower cubicle from the toilet and bathroom which were located in opposite corners of the room. A wall mounted TV and modem ensured we would not be cut off from the outside world during the times we were not roaming around said outside world!!

It was 2:45pm by the time we checked in to our cottage. There was no greeting party. The door worked on a keypad mechanism for which we already had the combination. One of the problems with travelling west is the issue of jetlag. Not so travelling east but traveling to the States can be a nightmare for the first few days. We were on the West Coast of the USA, GMT minus 8. We had been up since 05:30am UK time, it was now 10:45pm back home. There is no way we could last until the end of the day so our plan was to have a nap for a few hours, explore the local area, have our evening meal and then go to bed at the normal time. Hopefully we will sleep through and wake up at 8am-ish with our body clock in perfect sync!! Sounds like a plan but unfortunately jet lag doesn’t work that way.

Sure enough we slept for two and a half hours, freshened up and wandered out as planned. We finally retired to bed at about 11:30pm and despite both waking up a few times during the night, we managed to drop back off to sleep again, eventually getting up, relatively refreshed at just after 8:00am (hold that thought!!).

Seattle is in the North West corner of the USA, the largest city in the State of Washington. Most people think that Seattle is the State capital but that honour goes to Olympia. Washington is known as the Evergreen State due to its abundance of evergreen forests. Seattle, is a big city will lots to see and do. Admittedly, most will cost an entrance fee of some description but as this is our first time our plan is to wander around, get our bearings as cheaply as possible!!

There are plenty of cafes, coffee shops and restaurants along the stretch of 12th Avenue where we were staying so after breakfasting at the Cherry Ave café we headed down town to our first stop of the day, the hundred-year-old, Pike Place market. I say down because, whilst not in the same league as San Francisco for its hilly terrain, Seattle has still been built on a series of peaks and troughs. The market was just over a mile to walk and after a slight incline to 10^th Avenue, it was down hill all the way.

The thing I like about cities such as Seattle is the mix of old and the new. A case in point is a parish church that we passed. Nestled in between a series of tall trees (evergreen, no doubt!!), this early 20^th century church was dwarfed by three ominous looking space-age skyscrapers rising up in the background testament that the traditional still has a role to play along side (what some would call, not everyone though) progress!!

Pike Place market overlooks Elliot Bay on Seattle’s waterfront and is traditionally a farmer’s market with an eclectic mix of farmers produce, craft shops and merchants. This is the most popular tourist destination in Seattle attracting over ten million tourists each year. This makes it the twentieth most popular tourist attraction in the world just above Zocalo in Mexico City and below Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong!!

Across the road at 1912 Pike Place is the very first Starbucks. From the address can you guess what year the store opened? Yes, that’s right 1971!!

One of the iconic structures in Seattle is the Space Needle. This 605ft tall observation tower was once the tallest structure west of the Mississippi!! The Space needle was built for the 1962 World Fair and was a mash up of two designs. One design was that of a hot air balloon tethered to the ground whist the other was of a flying saucer. In 1962 this was the characteristic shape of all alien space crafts!! At $34 entry fee, the flights of stairs to the top weren’t the only thing that was steep!! It would be nice to see a panoramic of the Seattle city skyline so we took the cheap route and headed for an area known as Kerry Park. The terrace on the South Slope of Queen Anne hill gives the view that is part of the opening credits of the sitcom Frasier and is supposedly the view Frasier sees from his condo. Although Frasier was based in Seattle all filming was done at Paramount Studios and on location in or around the L.A environs. The only episode to have been shot in Seattle was the 1000^th but having never seen any episode of Frasier I can’t confirm this.

Now, Google maps doesn’t show contours but as Kerry Park lies only 1.1 miles from the Space Needle it should have been a gentle stroll. The clue was really in the words ‘terrace’, ‘South Slope’ and ‘hill’!! I’ve never known anyone to get a panoramic view of a city from ground level!! After a hike up several steep streets and 53 steps, I was still trying to explain to Roisin that the things she was telling me to do could only be done in the presence of a priest, several qualified medics and the fire brigade when tra-laa….we reached our goal. The walk, despite being in an upward direction had only taken thirty-five minutes and even Roisin agreed it was worth the breathlessness and chest pains more associated with someone on the verge or a coronary!! The view that greeted us wasn’t just the cluster of high rise skyscrapers that formed the skyline of down town Seattle but also the coast line of the West Seattle peninsula, the expanse of Elliott Bay that glistened in the mid-afternoon sun and across to Bainbridge Island with its landscaped gardens and endless nature trails.

Taking centre stage on the south facing terrace of Kerry Park is a sculpture called Changing Form. I thought it would be cool when looking for an original shot to frame the Space Needle through one of the openings in this sculpture. That is until, when reading about the park, after the event, it was the most popular thing to do by wannabe photographers!!!

The walk back to the Seattle Center, the park in which the Space Needle is situated, did not take as long and after a well-earned refreshment stop at a food hall known as the Armory for a refreshing mango smoothie we picked up the number 3 bus on 3^rd Avenue.

We ate our evening meal at a German sports bar called the Rhein Haus several blocks from our cottage. At 09:30pm we succumbed to sleepy eyes and had to retire for the night. Earlier on in this blog I told you to hold that thought. The thought was about beating jet lag. At 04:45am I was staring wide eyed at the ceiling. No matter how much I tossed and turned, I was wide awake and no amount of closing my eyes was going to change that fact. Damn you jet lag, you win again. That film with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan has a lot to answer for!!!

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Comments

[Jill]

Wow! Just Wow! Love the blog and learning new things from them. Who knew Frasier wasn’t even filmed in Seattle (asides the 1000th episode) ??

[Rosie]

Still sleepless in Seattle!!
Don’t forget the ‘sausage stamp’!!

[chrisandroisin]

Sausage stamp!!
No, that's defo going in but it must be the jet lag as that happens in the next blog entry!!