Sleepless in Seattle
Trip Start
Mar 08, 2008
1
8
9
Trip End
Mar 28, 2008
Seattle,
Washington,
United States
Friday, March 21, 2008
Seattle is an absolutely fantastic city
City Skyline Seattle
. Situated on Pudget Sound, and surrounded by Lake Elliot and Lake Washington it is the 25th biggest city in the USA and is situated in the northwest corner of the country. It is one of America's most modern cities as this was one of the last areas in the country discovered by Europeans in the late 18th century. However Seattle didn't really get going as a city until the 1890s when gold rushes in Alaska and the Yukon made Seattle a main entry point to these regions for people seeking their fortunes. The city is home to the Seattle rock scene in the early 1990s, a scene that single handledly nearly destroyed decent music as we came to know it until Britpop & Prog saved the day in 97, numerous movies like Sleepless in Seattle and the 80s classic 'Say Anthing', Frasier and some other TV shows. Many Aussies describe this place as being the Melbourne of North America. With this in mind I checked it out in order to form my own opinion. Seattle is usually surrounded by cloud and a light drizzle. In fact there are only 55 days a year when the skies are clear here and most of these are in summer. So you can imagine how lucky I was to have my entire time here with nearly clear blue skies, sunshine and no rain and I arrived on the 1st day of Spring (sun is shining, flowers are bluming all that ...). After performing a quick recon of the city I set my sites on the cities main attraction, the Pike Place Market. I am more of a market expert then people realise and have never been very impressed with any of the markets I've seen outside of Melbourne (this includes the shockingly pathetic Salamanca market). The Sunday Camberwell market, the Queen Vic and the south Melbourne markets all take some beating IHMO. However the Pike Place market is all of these fused together in an area about the size of the Queen Vic market. Its set out in a confusing array of arcades & old buildings and the market not only pours out into the surrounding streets but is found hidden inside numerous levels of these buildings. You can walk & walk through each building again and again, back and forth and always make a different turn and discover something new.
The market offers food, food and more food & everything else you expect from a market. Fresh produce (fish, fruit, vegetables, meats etc..), tacky tourist soveunirs, Cafe's, coffee's, bakeries selling bread (unusual for America), donuts, books, clothes, cheeses, speacility shops and an array of international cuisine. There was an obvious french influence here as you can tell by the names - sur la table, du jour & the very french bakery. There was Turkish & Greek food, Italian, Falafel and most perculary a Russian place that sold wierd looking food that had the longest lines of the lot (if I was adventureous I'd have tried some). The only reason why this market is not better then anything in Melbourne is that nobody was selling 2nd hand CDs - if it did it would be a shoe in for worlds best market. After eating my hearts content here and perusing all the shops I could easily have spent a day but left the area for the bay and a trip on the ferry.
Seattle is not only a city set between some lakes but in the distance you can see the snow capped Cascade Mountains. In another direction you have mount Rainer, the 5th biggest mountain in the USA and in another direction you have another mountain range with snow capped mountains. I think its the Olympic but I'm not sure. With the water, and the snow capped mountains in the background combined with the city skyline I was able to get some stunning views. Short on time I headed to the museum precient and took in 'the Seattle Music experience'. Here I wanted to get some explanations on how the Seattle rock scene started but a little offshoot museum next door called 'the science fiction museum' turned out to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This museum is a must for any nerd. It had the original console used in the 67-69 Star Trek series. An array of lights that looked really tacky! It also had ET, a klingon, numerous phasers from different TV series & movies, twiggy from Buck Rogers, the robotic dog from the original BSG, the robot from Lost in Space, the actual model of the death star used in Star Wars, a history of Sci Fi and a zero gravity toilet. It was the coolest place. In the end I didn't spend much time experiencing music but when I was there all I felt was fustration. The problem with this museum is that they have all these interviews recorded with numerous big name people on various computers throughout the place but when the museum is crowded people just hog a computer and you can't get on one. So you don't get to see anything. They also have recording studios, mixing desks, instruments to play with but again people hog these things and I didn't get to play with anything.
Annoyed at this I decided to use the little time I had left to see if the museum had anything about Kenny Loggins. Indeed he seems to be so influencial over here I was pretty much expecting him to show up somewhere but he was nowhere to be found. There were the original guitars used by Jimmy Hendrix and a history into the evolution of some different styles of American music. Hip-Hop, cha cha, electronic etc... Eventually I found a history into the Seattle music scene. It turned out the scene (eventually) grew out of the bans against 'Louie Louie' a song by a Seattle band in the 60s that got played so many times it was banned here. This reminded me of the bans some Melbourne churches had of 'Shine Jesus Shine' in the 90s that gave the song a sort of secret cult following. Seattle has always had rock bands, in the 70s Seattle gave us Heart, which I didn't know before coming here, that gave us hits such as 'Magic Man', 'Barracudda' and 'Alone'. However in the 80s alot of clubs were banned from playing certain sorts of music, the law were coming down hard on these and party venues and so when you push music underground you eventually get a scene that gave us Nirvana and many more before the Presidents of the United States came along and ended everything.
My last stop here was the Space Needle. A series within a series, this is the entrant for the classic series, 'Great Towers of the World'. Built for the 1962 World Fair, this towering structure was to symbolize the future. Nowadays it looks like a tacky tower from the 1960s with a great array of tacky souvenirs, my favourite being the salt & pepper shakers in the shape of the needle. I was treated to more stunning views of the city & area and was also able to check out the world's tallest structure display at the top. Now I've been to 2 Eiffel Towers (one in Paris, the other Vegas), the CN Tower, Centrepoint Tower, the Skytower, the Empire State building and many more.
Seattle is also known for its 'coffee scene' & is the home to the orginal Starbucks. The original Starbucks can be found in the Pike Place Market. I checked it out in order to determine if the original Starbucks is better then any other one and if it all went downhill afterwards. It was easily the busiest Starbucks I'd been to. People were queuing up out the door. It was certainly efficient though. They have 3 girls taking orders, more staff just doing this then in some other Starbucks and once they take it they write it down on a cup & then throw it over to the 2 barristers, who must catch it. Its very cool to watch and if they thumble the catch then someone waiting can intervenue and recover for them. It took 20 mins to get a coffee, a little more then at other Starbucks and it was nothing special. It tastes the same as any other Starbucks. So they've either standardized the taste to the point that its the same everywhere, or it always tasted like this. I tried alot of coffee in Seattle in order to determine its quality. I used a random method to find it and I have to say the coffee was ordinary. A little too strong in general but I did have 1 cup that was really good. I'm sure if I lived here I could find some good places as there were Cafe's everywhere.
I can see why people think Seattle is like Melbourne. It has markets, coffee, places to eat, shopping and a few other things to do. It is quite a big tourist destination over here, despite not being peak season yet and this took me by surprise. Its a beautiful city, known as the Emerald city in fact, and definetly worth a visit if you're in the area (but come to Pike Place market on a Saturday for the full effect).
This ends my time in the USA as I now head over the border to Canada. I've compiled a list, top 5 things I'll miss about America.
1. Rootbeer & Siera Mist. I love Rootbeer but we discovered this new soft drink over here that is a refreshing lemon line flavour that is miles ahead of Mountain Dew & Sprite. If you come here check it out.
2. Free refills on all my drinks.
3. Chicken options. Chicken is my 2nd favourite food and over here they take chicken options to the next level. In Australia if you go to a non Asian restaurant you generally only have a few chicken options. Over here they have an entire page devoted to chicken options. Thats 12 - 14 ways chicken can be done. From cagun, to orange chicken, lemon chicken, mexician infused flavours, down to various fried chicken options it can take me a very long time to order when I see the chicken page.
4. The overall good mood that everyone is in over here. 'Have a good day', 'You have a good night now', 'Welcome to ...', 'If you've got any questions feel free to ask, I'm happy to assist'. The entire service industry blows me away.
5. The accents. There are regional differences. Californian accents are the hardest to get the handle on for some reason, the other states generally have a more drawn out sound that you get a handle on pretty quickly.
Thanks for reading this far.
Paul.
