Seattle

27th-30th September

Visited the Pike Place Market - wow! The place is amazing, fish, meat, fruit, flowers, souvenirs and much more. The market started 103 years ago because the locals were fed up with the huge profits the middle men were making, so the farmers started selling their produce direct to the people and it continues on today as the oldest public market in America.

The Seattlites must always have fresh flowers at home - $5 for a small bouquet,
$10 for a large one.

1% of any new construction in Seattle CBD must be also spent on Art..  as a result there is some funky art all around the city...  being the home of many famous bands, it also lays claim to the Rock and Sci-Fi museum, otherwise known as experience music and science fiction museum http://www.empsfm.org/ ("where Rock meets Spock")

Despite our vowing to never take one of those silly Duck tour rides... on day two that's exactly what we did..  and it was fantastic...  the entire duck was ours, and all proceeds on that particular day went to Starlight Foundation for kids, so it was all good Karma.  "Chuck Wagon" our guide was full of knowledge, and despite the fact that our duck could have carried another 40 people, he still put on an amazing show as we drove, around and floated past the sights of Seattle... including all of the "Sleepless in Seattle" movie hotspots.

Naturally, we 'did' the Seattle Needle, and it was far bigger than I had expected...  the thing was built in the 1960's for a world science fair, and has been updated to include some really cool additions... including multiple video cameras that you can control from multiple screen in the viewing level, and a revolving restaurant that allowed you to appreciate the full vista.

Our visit to the Boeing Factory was interesting for Leah and Myself, although the girls were not that excited by the enormity of it all.  The Factory itself is the largest building (by volume) in the world. It is 500m wide, 1000m long and 11 stories high. It is full of planes under construction, including the massive 747's and the newest in the fleet, the 787's. At one stage, Boeing employed one in every 5 people that lived in Seattle. There is currently something like 70,000 staff at the Everett plant that we visited, working a 24hr shift, 365 days per year.

We stayed at a more upmarket motel in Seattle, Ramada, which taught us a valuable lesson...  the previous places might have lacked the lobby, but they made up for it in honest keenness to please.  There was a real heart warm honesty that showed us these owner operators were genuinely keen to ensure our stay was the very best their humble abode could provide.  That was sadly lacking at Ramada, where the automatic response to anything being broken was 'sorry, that's broken, have a nice day'...  Abbey, naturally, latched onto that saying, and along with the USA twang, it rang out for a number of hours all the way East as we left Seattle.