Updated by PaulSeattle - The home of Starbucks, Microsoft and Frasier Crane - now home to Anna Barenfeld and Paul Clifford for the next few days!
Back in the early 90’s grunge music was formed in Seattle; a musical genre based around misery, moaning and wallowing in your own self pity. You would be forgiven therefore for thinking that the city would not hold too many charms for the visiting tourist but you would be sorely wrong! The people here are charming, amiable and downright friendly. It almost make me think the whole grunge thing was an ironic joke to the rest of the world. Except we all know Americans don’t do irony!
After arriving on the Amtrak Cascade service from Vancouver we took the free bus (all buses in Seattle are free!) to our hotel - a nice place with an art theme running through each room - You think we might get a room with nice Van Gogh or Leonardo works? No we got the room that looked like a graffiti’ed London Tube Station!
The Seattle Space Needle stands at 520ft high and dominates the Seattle skyline (remember the opening credits from Frasier?!) We had a good view of this from our hotel but felt like we had to go higher to see the real spectaculars. The price for a ride up to the top of the needle is $18 each. Thankfully we spoke to the friendly receptionist At the hotel who told us about the Columbia Centre - a downtown office block that stands at 1,050ft high - twice that of the space needle! The best part? It only costs $3 each to get to the top - rock on!!
The world famous Pike Place Public Market in Seattle was our next stop. This is the place where the cheeriest fishmongers in the world sing songs and throw fish to each other across huge distances whilst the public look on in amazement. We would have bought a side of Salmon but it probably would not have kept well in the backpack for a week!
This market is also where the first ever Starbucks coffee store opened and its still trading. The queue was too long (even longer than the Starbucks in Ealing Broadway!) so we decided to get our caffeine fix at a place cheekily called “Seattle’s Best Coffee Company” - having tasted a great up there they’re probably not wrong!
At the end of the day hunger got the better of us and we decided to head to a Moroccan restaurant so authentic you had to sit on the floor, eat with your fingers and wear a Fez. I felt like Tommy Cooper. Just like that!
The next morning we went for a tour of Seattle’s underground city. This came into existence over a hundred years ago when the town’s planners realised that hadn’t built the city high enough to cope with the population’s sewage needs so they built over the existing streets. Now a whole different world exists underground. I’m sure the guides who host this tour are part-time comedians because they will constantly take the p**s out of you and tease you about where you come from. At least we have bragging rights over the yanks for being better at football, right??
Our brief tour of Seattle had to come to an end on day three and we boarded the Amtrak Coast Starlight train service for a 22 hour train journey back down to California. This is where we could catch up on the lost sleep after being sleepless in Seattle.
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