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.
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