Sleeping in Seattle

IBM, Microsoft, Frasier, Space Needle, Grunge music, Jimi Hendrix, Boeing and Starbucks. Yep, all of these come from Seattle. It's also famous for rain, the city averages about 58 clear days a year, but it's not too bad on our visit.
One of the most stand-out features of the Seattle skyline is the Space Needle. This tower was built for the 1962 World's Fair. For it's age it still looks modern but it's not as tall as it first appears or how it's potrayed on all the postcards.. For one it's a bit of distance from the city's cluster of downtown skyscrapers which gives you a different perspective. Most photographs show the Space Needle towering over the buildings in the city but once you see it you soon realise that it's all a bit of camera trickery. We go up the Columbia tower, considerably cheaper and taller than the Space Needle, for a view over the city and clearly it looks significantly down onto the Space Needle. It also shows the city's landscape for what it really is. A city that's not to dissimilar to Vancouver, it's surrounded by plenty of deep blue water and the distant Olympic Mountains which look spectacular with a slight similarity to Mount Fuji in Japan. It's a shame that life on the street tells a different story.
The good looking Pioneer Square has decent sculptures and plant covered buildings but no people walking around it or sitting enjoying their lunch here as the homeless have taken it for their home already.
There's plenty of bars here and obviously coffee shops, still Vancouver beats it for Starbucks locations, but there's little else. It's a bit dull really.
The 'famous' Pikes Place public market at the dock sells fish as well as plenty of tatty shops selling some rubbish and some decent products from books to art to t-shirts and jewellery. The moved original Starbucks coffee house is here that started the global chain off.
Tramps all over the place ask us for money and it begins to wear thin very quickly. I can't see how a nation that's supposed to be so powerful has such a huge problem that it doesn't seem to be doing anything about. I also hear the first bout of blatant racism. A group of well fed, well groomed and well dressed black guys mouthing off loudly in the street about how one of them wants to kill all the white people of America. Acting the big hard men they weren't they strolled along the street in their expensive 'bling' clothes abusing the world around them. For all their anger they didn't seem to be doing too bad out of the situation. In fact a lot of people complain on streets, usually homeless when I don't give them money, but really they're living a decent life in comparison to what we've seen in places like Bolivia or China. It's time to leave. As far as cities that are worth visiting Manchester absolutely hammers Seattle in every way except it's skyline and that alone can not make a city. It's a shame because the buildings look decent and there are plenty of places to spend your cash on food and booze and it could be a decent place to walk around if it weren't for the homeless. There's just not much substance, other than the stuff the tramps are inserting into their bodies.
We need to buy a car, desperately. We hire a car for a couple of days to drive around the area and see what we can find. We're given a huge Dodge Charger to drive around in and visit a few dealerships. One road in Everett, north of Seattle, is full of car sales places for miles. And after a couple of days of looking and negotiating, getting insurance and so forth, we have a car. A Subaru Impreza. It's almost time for the real road trip across this continent to begin. We have to return in a week or so for more paperwork and then we are free to travel the country as we please, weather permitting. Returning the hire car was a bit worrying at first as Laura lost me on the freeway, oh to be lost in Seattle. We meet up at the rental place and all is well. We have a few days before we have to return for the paperwork so we may as well head north to Canada and Vancouver Island, it's not that far from the border here. Before moving on we take a close look at the Space Needle and the wacky looking building next to it. It's the music and science experience thingy and looks really modern and space-age. Seattle tried to become a forward thinking hi-tech place and in a way it worked, although the skytrain system seemed a bit rubbish.
Before we leave Seattle we're given a reminder of the last couple of days. A young guy wearing brand new clothes, including an expensive skateboarding hoodie, asks us for change. He is better dressed than us. I just stare at him in disbelief. This could get on my wick.
At least it did produce one good thing, decent music. Besides, they had nothing else to do.

To Seattle and beyond

The longest part of the gloomy rain sodden four hour bus ride from Vancouver to Seattle was getting through customs. Everyone has to get off the bus with all their belongings and the driver has to get everyone's bags for checking by US officials. Thing is it's very slow. Every single day 3 buses from different companies arrive 4 times during that day at roughly the same time. You'd have thought there would be some kind of preparation for this influx of people but no. One guy on the customs desk and three guys behind standing around talking crap. I'm still not sure why we had to pay $6 to re-enter the US either but we did.
We arrive in Seattle, spotting the famous Space Needle from a distance like we were looking for Blackpool Tower. It was throwing it down, but luckily our bus dropped us only a couple of blocks from our intended hotel. We still got soaked. Seattle definitely lives up to it's reputation for being wet!
We needed to get down the coast fast so hiring a car turned out to be one of best ways to do it, that way we could see a bit on the way too. We didn't see anything of Seattle other than the car hire place because we knew we'd be back to drop the car off anyway. Unfortunately, the car hire contract we signed didn't allow us to go any further than Oregon state, in other words into California. On the second day we were driving through the snow covered rolling landscape of the California mountains. Excellent.
From Seattle it didn't take long to get into the hills and the snow. Even on the main interstate the snow is piled high at the roadside whilst we drive into thick flakes. Endless green hills covered in snow and a eerie mist. It looked like the opening credits of a film. Now this is America.


Further along the highway we pass endless signs telling me to buy any item you can imagine. The road signs here not only tell you what petrol stations are coming up ahead but also what motels and fast food joints are in town. I'm constantly feel the need to eat after being bombarded with KFC, Subway and Taco Bell signs.
Stopping in an no nothing town that mainly consists of one road of generic fast food places and petrol stations is a cheaper alternative to a tourist attraction town. When night comes round I'm quite glad to come across yet another strip of this glowing signs of the night.
Our aim is to get to San Francisco for the day before New Years Eve and stop for a couple of nights. We manage it in two days, not bad from Seattle. The stop outside San Francisco was a motel by the side of the highway, standard. A MacDonalds was next door and a guy is getting beaten by a group of blokes in the car park. Various shouting and noise continues for a while. There's nothing like a good beating to make you feel at home.
Driving in America is easy enough. It seemed a bit confusing in Seattle with the constant Stop signs and bad signs but once on the highway you see another side to American life. Huge trucks and absolutely massive bus size campervans are everywhere.
California looks good though even though I didn't quite expect there to be this much snow, I thought it was sunny and hot all year round. Damn you Hollywood!