The Battle of Seattle

After Vancouver, I made my way down to Seattle - home of Jumbo Jets, Frasier, and a bunch of famous dead people. My plan had been to take the Amtrak train, but on arriving at the railway station and realising I'd massively misread the timetable, I opted for the Greyhound Bus instead. It turned out that there was only one train per day from Vancouver, and that the service noted on the timetable was in fact the Greyhound bus that I got on anyway. After navigating my way to what looked like the main downtown area, I quickly hunted down the ferry terminal from where I would get the ferry over to where I was booked in for the night - the HI Hostel on Vashon Island. Little did I know at the time just how out-of-the-way Vashon Island really was, or the fact that there were only three ferry services per day, and those only being around 8am, 5pm and 6pm.

So I decided to abandon Vashon Island and seek alternative accomodation. I arrived shortly after midday, and the next boat to Vashon wasn't until 5pm, so I started asking around to seek alternative accommodation. It turned out that there's only actually one hostel anywhere near the middle of Seattle, and of course, it was totally booked out. I was directed around a couple of hotels, and eventually found myself in the Panama Hotel, a grand old building in the International District. The hotel was nice and cheap, but as such, needed a good lick of paint, and had a slightly spooky air to it. Turned out it had a pretty interesting history, and it was definitely a lot more interesting than your average Travel Inn! I also made a friend in Jade, an American woman who was incredibly upset to see the Seattle Seahawks get beaten by the San Francisco 49'ers in the first NFL game of the season.

Seattle was a bit of a weird city. I didn't quite manage to figure out what its "vibe" was. It was definitely pretty to look at in a lot of places, but much like Vancouver, there were a lot of homeless people around, and a lot of strange bylaws in place to try and disrupt the homeless community. For example, it was illegal to sit or lie down on any public pavement in the downtown area. I watched one very bizarre scene as one guy sat on a wall outside a shop to wait for his friends to come out, causing no obstruction or harm to anyone, but within a few seconds, one of the city's "downtown ambassadors" (that's the "community police support officers" to any British readers) threaten the guy with arrest and having him registered as an official vagrant. Definitely one hell of an over-reaction if you ask me.

Anyway, as for activities in Seattle, I took an underground tour, went up the Space Needle, and did a lot of running back and forward to various camera shops! The underground tour was a bit of a disappointment, despite a personal recommendation from the cool Russian guy who worked in the pizza shop. The deepest it went was about ten feet below ground level, and was basically to illustrate the fact that Seattle was built in a stupid location. The Space Needle was pretty cool - I loved watching the sun setting behind the Olympic Mountains and watching all the planes fly in and out over the city. I even managed to pick up a mega-naff souvenir t-shirt out of the bargain bin for a couple of dollars. But, the big problem when I got up the space needle, was that I discovered my wide-angle lens had decided to stop auto-focusing on anything at any distance.

Seattle was weird for camera shops. Most in the city were useless (think Jessops but worse), and the one that was any good was a hell of a walk. Glazers (the good one) had a really nice range of stuff, but it was pretty expensive. I first needed to run up there looking for sensor cleaner (I had mega dirt on the D700), then went up on a mission to replace my shoddy Sigma 18-35. I was very very close to buying a second hand Nikon 20-35mm f/2.8, but decided against it at the last minute, and ended up not replacing the lens until I got to Portland.

So anyway, to sum up, I was mostly unimpressed by Seattle, although I think in different circumstances it could've been a really enjoyable visit.

Late Update

First off, let me apologise for not keeping this blog too up-to-date. It's a kinda funny thing - for once in my life, I actually have something worthwhile to write a blog about, but of course, I'd much rather be out and about doing stuff than sitting in and writing a blog! To be honest, the only reason I'm writing this is that I'm stuck on a train between Seattle and Portland at the moment.

So the trip since my last update:

I made it to New York and had a great time there. I stayed in the New York Loft Hostel over on Varet Street in Brookyln, near the "hipster" Williamsburg neighbourhood. On my first night arriving, I met up with the ace Simona and went for a wander around the city, mostly not knowing where the hell I was going. I got me a mobile phone for very little money, and I began on one of this trip's other big outcomes - the eating of lots of giant hamburgers. The weather was amazing, but the heat pretty stifling in the city. A nice wee trip down to the beach at Coney Island was pretty pleasant, it's a very strange place. Lots of seeing the sights in Manhattan, one of the highlights being the International Centre For Photography, where I saw an exhibition of some pretty amazing Japanese photographers. On my last night, I managed to get in touch with Carol Finnie, my Dad's cousin, and we went to her local for a few beers. Of course, a few beers turned into a lot of beers, and I ended up leaving the pub at 3:30am. Which, y'know, would be fine, except that my flight was at 7:30am. I hopped in a cab over to the hostel, although having to give the cab driver directions with my knowledge of NY was definitely not reassuring. Quickly packed my rucksack and managed to jump in a cab out to JFK airport with an English guy who was flying out too. Unfortunately however, the cabbie was even less good with his directions, actually taking us to LaGuardia airport first, and when we finally got to JFK, getting lost on the road between terminals. I made it in just on time for check in, still pretty drunk and very very tired, so of course security went to town giving me the full "step aside please sir" treatment and a pretty thorough interview on the origins of the packet of sweeties I had in my pocket.

The flight sucked. I maintain that using the reclining seats on economy class flights should be made a hanging offence.

Landed in Vancouver - weather was just as grey as I'd kinda expected. My first hostel turned out to be more of a hotel. The individual bedrooms were good for sprawling out and catching up on sleep, but the location was in one of the roughest areas of town, with junkies, meth-heads and alkies all over the place. That was just during the day, you should've seen it at night! Thankfully after two nights there, I was able to move up to the Hostelling International hostel on Granville Street. I met a lot of great people there - Beppe, Marie-Eve, Jane, Sean, Vasiliki, Sadie and Alicia were all a bunch of sound people, with the ladies in particular loving my kilt the one night I wore it to go out. The HI on Granville Street has been the best place so far, and I'd definitely recommend it if you're in the city.

Next was a real fun part. From Vancouver, I jumped on an old rickety DeHavilland Beaver floatplane out to Salt Spring Island, about 25 minutes flight from the centre of Vancouver. Salt Spring reminded me a lot of Arran, only with good weather and no midges. I couldn't find accomodation, so I grabbed me a cheap tent before I left Vancouver and camped at the Ganges Campground, just outside of Ganges, the main town on the island. The tent was pretty cramped, but the ground was good, and I had the entire campsite pretty much to myself. Thankfully, the weather was excellent the whole time, otherwise the outdoor showers wouldn't have been much fun. There wasn't a great deal to do on Salt Spring, but that suited me just perfectly - needed a bit of relaxing-in-the-middle-of-nowhere time after New York and Vancouver. Made the mistake of tryin to cycle the southern half of the island on a clapped-out Specialized Expedition hire bike, but thankfully the bus was able to take me home from the bottom of the island. Had to wait two hours for the next bus, but got chatting to a really sound English chick called Kate, and spent those two hours having a few nice cold beers looking over the harbour. Coming home relaxed, if a little sunburnt, meant another floatplane ride. We had to pick up passengers from another island on the way back - we were experiencing some turbulence, so on the way from Maple Bay back to Vancouver, the pilot decided to stay low, actually flying UNDER some electricity cables between two of the islands. Pretty scary stuff, but really good fun.

I got back to Vancouver again, only this time staying in the Cambie Hostel on Seymour Street. Bedroom was pretty good, just sharing with one pretty cool French guy called Cedric, but the hostel wasn't all that great. The people weren't all that cool, although I did enjoy a few beers with two (unconnected) Aussies called Kate and Chak. I did however, discover an excellent gameshow called Hole In The Wall. Caught a bizarre sporting event in the form of the Red Bull Soapbox Race, saw a Grouse at the top of Grouse Mountain, and found a really good pub that played Slayer - those things made the second vancouver visit pretty nice for me.

Right, anyways, the train is approaching Portland now, so I'd better stick the laptop away. I'll hopefully get back on shortly to tell of my experiences in Seattle!