Seattle dreaming

Rail travel really isn’t much of a thing in the US. Every time I visit it hammers home the extreme unfriendliness of any form of personal mobility other than driving. It was therefore no surprise to find the light rail station EXTREMELY well hidden at the airport via a maze of steps, car parks, walkways and the like.

Find it we did though, and boarded for the 50 minute run into Pioneer Square station. At $6 for the two of us and ending up only a block away it didn’t make sense to do anything different.

Whilst on the train, I idly flicked on my emails. Hold on, what’s this? “Booking.com: Immediate action required” and then another follow up a couple of hours later giving me a countdown until cancellation of my hotel booking due to an invalid credit card. What the hell? You’ve had literally 11 months since booking and it’s just changed to Visa.

Crisis averted with a call, just before their ‘deadline’ we arrived a short while later. Home for the next 3 nights was the Best Western on Yesler Way. A choice I would consider ‘solid’ rather than particularly luxurious, although the $800 price tag would demur. This is not a cheap city to stay in, folks.

Pioneer Square area, and more specifically Yesler Way, has a fascinating history as America’s pioneer city, the gateway to the Alaskan gold rush. Yesler Way was the first ‘skid row’, thus named for the oiled logs that the timber would be rolled down onto waiting ships. A gritty area which hasn’t lost the grit. A lot of homelessness and poverty interspersed with great wealth.

One truism of international travel is that time zones are NOT your friends. Having boarded in the London morning, we arrived after a 10hr flight into the Seattle mid-morning. Staying awake until some semblance of bedtime on this first day is a must, but it was a struggle. We set out on the recently rejuvenated harbourfront area for a wander, snacks, a civilised coffee and then the inevitable beers. You can’t not, with microbreweries on your doorstep. We managed a couple of hours of wandering before an excellent early Sushi dinner (happy hour, init) before turning in.

Everything is better after a bit of sleep, and suitably refreshed we managed a great morning wander around Pike Place Market and surrounds. I never feel like Mark is quite as into snooping around these esoteric delights as me, but he enjoyed the Olympic Sculpture park with works by Ai Weiwei and others adorning the skyline. The little child in me was delighted to see the huge double-stacked container trains rumbling through. Seattle is still one of the US’ main ports. We finished this excursion with a random Vietnamese cafe for some form of iced coffee confection and a properly spicy Banh Mi breakfast sandwich.

Next stop was to head out onto the water. Since it was Mark’s birthday I was determined, for once, to be a good partner and had booked us a 2 hour trip on Bay Lady, a beautiful historic sailing vessel- Far less peopley than the other jaunts on offer. Whilst we received basically nothing in the way of historical or geographical insights, this was nonetheless a nice way to while away a couple of hours, particularly with the onboard beer available.

Evening dawned, and time for our biannual ´most expensive birthday meal’ competition with dinner at Lola restaurant in downtown, a very well reviewed and hip Greek place. Well, it should be. It was a decent dinner with nice wine, but probably not $250 nice. Jet lag won once more, so that was us for the day.

This was all becoming a little bit whistlestop, therefore I was glad of a bit of respite care the next morning courtesy of the adjacent barber shop, allowing me an hour’s solid mooching on my tod around the fascinating streets of Pioneer Square, history in every brick. The way I used to travel. Once he was collected we enjoyed yet another artisan-milled coffee in a trendy shed and then headed to the Beneath the Streets tour looking at Seattles underground history. After an all-consuming fire the city’s forefathers took the opportunity to rebuild on a grand block system, with solid roads but pillars through every existing building to form a higher ground level. Quite the undertaking.

Whilst this was interesting I’m not convinced about the rave reviews. I reckon the evening one which covers all of the smut and grime would be more engaging.

Next stop on our bumper seeallthesights day was the Space Needle, Seattle’s iconic and gigantic tower. Since we went for combo tickets, we also got to see the differently impressive Chihuhly garden in the grounds, packed with amazing glass works of art. For reasons which became clear later in the trip, it was incredibly busy all around here. Too much, exit.

Bargain of the day would be the amazing 1960’s monorail that whisks you between the CBD and the Space Needle park for $8 return. Extra geek points for sitting up front and pretending to be the driver.

Concluding our Seattle Smorgasbord for the day we headed to the final arm of our combo city ticket, heading up the Smith Tower, less impressive in stature than the Sky Needle but with fascinating history and amazing views, then via a decidedly bohemian cafe for fizz and macaroons and finally to watch some Major League Baseball.

Whilst the tickets were cheap as chips, our solitary pint of beer each came to a new record of $20. Wowsers. Baseball is a great spectacle but….overstimulation much with a blaring game, announcement, sponsor thing on the big screen every 60 seconds or so. The final straw came for Mark with a group of screaming teenage girls behind us, feet on his seat. Nah, Romeo done.

Sunday was departure day- pick up the hire car at 12. Not wishing to waste moments however, we checked out early and dumped the bags at the hotel to visit the Gold Rush museum, a fantastic resource put on by the National Park Service and overseen by a super-cute retired ranger.

More Brownstone wanderings, then…get the last sights in, and the weather had been fantastically kind to us thus far. But Seattle wasn’t done with us yet. Popped into a coffee shop marked on Google but seemed distinctly like a service entrance… actually this was part of a very pricey and stylish hotel. Live jazz, a notable trio in fact, an excellent coffee, surely this is peak Seattle?

We’re off.