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| Space Needle, Seattle |
My trip from Victoria to Seattle was apparently awesome, or 'aaarsum' in the local vernacular, according to some local I met later that evening. Actually it wasn't; it was a perfectly comfortable and efficient sail on a speedy catamaran, the Victoria Clipper, with a good bar/cafe service and it took 2hrs 40mins. I have noticed, particularly in western Canada, and north-west America that everything is 'aaarsum'. They lazily use this word to cover what we might imply by saying 'OK', or 'jolly good', or 'oh really' or an ironic 'how interesting' . It is the knee-jerk response to any statement of fact or intention.
When asked where I come from and say "England", the response was invariably "aaarsum!". "What did you do today?" answer " I went on a city tour", comment "aaarsum!". "I'm just going to the lavatory"......."aaarsum!" Why do I find this irritating?
I hadn't a clue what to expect of Seattle. All I remembered about the place was that Boeing and Bill Gates' Microsoft have their HQs there. The first thing I realised was that the city is surrounded by water and built around a steep hill. The taxi from quayside to accommodation ( the Green Tortoise, and more about that place later ) had a steep climb to negotiate. Someone must do good business selling brakes and clutches.
Left: The speedy Victoria Clipper.
I booked myself onto a city tour for the next morning. At 0915hrs, prompt, a 30 seater coach rocks up with a driver, wearing a cowboy hat, called Moviere ( call me Mov ). That was it! Just me and Mov. He was a rather serious young man and asked me what I wanted to see. How was I to know! I thought he was supposed to tell me. I wish there had been some others there. Off we set and he told me that Seattle got it's name from a misspelling of the local Native American ( that's the American PC version of Indian ) chief's name. I suspected he was a bit 'PC' himself so I tested him by saying that in England we call Native Americans 'redskins'. He nearly fainted. So I think we established a mutual suspicion of each other. OK, he took me on a 1.5 hour, rather serious, tour. I learnt that Starbucks was started here and they have 416 outlets in the city. I was shown the enormous fishing fleet presently in harbour and from where the salmon and crabbing boats go off to Alaska in the summer and autumn. The crab fishing in the Bering Sea is particularly arduous and dangerous ( and presumably profitable ). I was given lots of background gen on the city and many of it's buildings. I won't bore you with it.
I was shown the locks on the canal connecting Lake Union to the sea at Puget Sound. I told him I lived next to a lock in London but that didn't stop him giving me a blow by blow account of how it worked. Also the salmon ladder. I told him I had seen one in action at Dunkeld. He had a script and he was damned well going to stick to it.
I asked him what he did for a hobby. He said he read lots of books and was due to start to a course in Human Sciences ( whatever that is ) at Washington University. He informed me that it rained on average 250 days of the year in Seattle ( ie not as much as Ireland ). It was indeed raining on our little tour. I felt well briefed and orientated and ready to sally forth on foot. He was due to do another tour in the afternoon and I hope he got a better audience.
Left: The fleet of salmon and crab fishing boats waiting in harbour. They set sail up the 'inner passage' to Alaska in June. The memorial is for those sailors who have been 'lost at sea' on these ventures and there have been many
Right: The Fremont Troll. Under the Fremont road bridge ( trolls like living under bridges as you know ). This was 'installed' after a competition and was only meant to be temporary, but the people liked it and it stayed.
Left: Another amusing statue. People waiting at a bus stop.
As mentioned earlier, I booked into a sort of backpackers' hostel called The Green Tortoise. A girl on the Victoria Clipper told me about it. A private, ie single, room cost $60 per night although they said they didn't have any currently available. It was $30 or less if you shared a room. I told the charming be-noseringed receptionist that I could not possibly share a room because it was very dangerous. When she asked why I said that I had been told ( by a most unreliable source, I hasten to add ) that when I slept I often sounded like a manic starving pig at feeding time and that I had previously driven a fellow room-mate to attempt to murder me. They kindly put me in a room for four by myself ( $60 ). It turned out to be a fantastic place and great fun. It was in a prestigious location next to the touristy Pike Street Market. It was clean, safe and had a most interesting and delightful collection of guests and extremely helpful staff. They had wi-fi throughout, free cook-your-own breakfast, unlimited coffee etc all day, free curry suppers on 4 nights a week and, importantly, unrivalled knowledge and literature on travelling just about anywhere. They also organised 'adventure tours' but normally for people about 35 years younger than me. It was great value and, for what it's worth, I strongly recommend the place . I suppose you can look it up on the internet.
Seattle famously hosted the International Fair in 1962. It already had it's Space Needle tower and it built a park containing many state-of-the-art exhibits and museums called the Seattle Centre around it, with a mono-rail to connect it to the city centre. It was all cutting-edge stuff at the time. I felt obliged to go up the Space Needle. Good views after a bit of a queue.
Right: A view from the Space Needle looking south over the city centre and quayside.
Left: A part of the Seattle Centre. These weird buildings house the museums of music and sci-fi. They were designed for the 1962 International Fair by the chap ( Frank Gehry? ) who designed the equally weird Guggenheim museum in Bilbao.
Right: In the music museum, the Guitar Tree. The museum featured pop music historical items and an 'inter-active' make your own pop music centre, plus a Jimmy Hendrix exhibition.
Wow. How cool is that?
Left:...........and a special Battlestar Galactica display. All the old models, costumes and props from the various TV and film series. I don't remember watching it.
Right: The driver's eye view from the mono-rail train. It only runs from the City centre to the Seattle Centre, a 1min 90secs journey.
Left: I was lucky enough to visit the Centre on 'International Pillow-Fighting Day' ( 2nd April ). It had completely escaped my attention.
Right: They seemed to enjoy their mass pillow-fight. All very good humoured. In England it would probably have involved drunken football fans and anarchists with the attendant riot squad and ambulances.
The 'downtown' area, especially along the quayside ( Elliott Bay ) was most jolly with lots of quaint bars, a 'farmers market', restaurants and shops, some very expensive ones, plus 'entertainers' who mostly did musical things, although one chap had a remarkably talented and amusing parrot which did alarming tricks. In general it was a pleasant city with lots of entertainment for us tourists.
Left and below: Various 'Artistes' around the Pike Street Market. The musicians were rather good.
........although what this bloke, left, was trying to achieve rather escaped me. It may have been an undercover policeman keeping an eye on things. I did actually go up to him and commend him on his dress sense.
The high spot for me was undoubtedly 'Riding the Ducks'. Perhaps I'm the last person in the world to experience this. The concept is simple; it is a guided tour in an amphibious vehicle, the 1942 built military DUKW. It has, however, become not so much just a tour as a 'Tour de Force', a 'Mad Performance Comique' and amusing, indeed I thought hysterically funny, for both children and adults. We were encouraged to buy 'quackers', yellow duck beak shaped things that quacked when you blew them. Our driver/compere/guide, dressed in 'ship's' uniform introduced himself, loudly, as Captain 'Tristan Shout'. He was wild. He gave a guided tour, but it involved 'relevant' rock music, him changing hats to suit the locale, he sang, he danced in his seat ( hands rarely on the steering wheel because he was 'hand-jiving' energetically ), he told appalling jokes, he ordered us to wave at bemused pedestrians and when to blow our quackers, which we did in unison. We drove around the streets and sailed through Lake Union. It could not possibly happen in the UK ( or Canada for that matter ). PC Plod would take one look and immediately arrest the driver for an aggravated case of ' dangerous driving' and possibly ' wilful intent to kill members of the public'. The UK 'Elf 'n' Safety Gestapo would never in a month of Sundays allow this cronky-looking old vehicle to sail into a choppy lake with 30 giggling passengers on board. Anyway, they can and do here. Another example of American enterprise and fun and stuff the spoil-sports ( although I am sure Capt Shout knew exactly what he was about and the thing was entirely safe ). It was indeed 'aaarsum'.
Right: The 'Duck'. They must have had about 10 of them and they appeared always to be full up and were obviously very popular.
Left: Some Duck Riders getting in a bit of quacking practice before the off. Around the start point there was just a faint reminiscence of those blasted Vuvuzelas!
Right: Difficult to capture the whackiness of all this. Rear view of the irrepressible Capt Tristan Shout..........
.......and him moving seamlessly into nautical mode.
Right: A fellow vessel moving along-side.
Left: A float-plane just about to take off, crossing our bows. I have no idea who had right of way over whom or who was controlling all this! It seemed to work without mishap.
Right: Not much margin for error if these planes have an engine problem.
OK, packing my bags and moving on. The girl in the Green Tortoise even helped me carry my stuff down several flights of stairs ( no lifts ). I think she probably thought that I was too geriatric to manage myself and I suppose I did rather increase the average age of the clientele. She was probably also grateful that no murders had taken place on her watch. I gave her a little snort as I left.
As a post-script, I am going to try to attach a 'video clip' of the crazy Capt Tristan Shout. It works at this end but, if my previous attempt at these clips is anything to go by, it won't work when 'posted'. It is an experiment. If anyone can offer assistance it would be appreciated. Maybe these blog things do not accept video clips.
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