Smuggling apples and other adventures. Day 1.

Last week we went on a quick jaunt to the United States of America, which is quite a cool thing to be able to do really... Come to think of it, you can only do that from one other country :)

On Wednesday night, after me and Tabs had zoomed home from work, we picked up a car and started our adventure - namely, driving it home on the wrong side of the road! All was, in fact, well with the driving thing, though I continued to find driving an automatic disconcerting for the whole trip. There's something very wrong (or maybe right) with a car where you can just take all your feet off all the pedals and not stall or make horrible crunching noises.

At about 7.30pm we headed off, four of us packed in, along with 3 snowboards and all our gear. It was a tight squeeze. I drove first and decided that Britain's motorways are far more sensible than Vancouver's freeways, where slip lanes enter and exit from both sides for no apparent reason. However, we reached the border intact, in one excited piece.

At the border the first guard we met seemed to think we had largely good intentions and might behave ourselves, so let us through to the border security/immigration/customs placy thing. At this point you give up your car, keys, and hence, belongings, to the lovely people outside, who it turns out are 'agricultural officers' (or, so they say...), while you go inside to fill out a form and pay random amounts of money until they see fit to let you go...

So, inwards we went, and after hanging around for a little while a scary man in uniform approached us with a plastic bag with something in it. "What's this?" What is that? Very good question - I wasn't sure what that was either. On closer inspection, it looked like an apple core - but was it an apple core laced with some kind of illegal drugs we shouldn't be carrying? I was confused.

"Uh, I think that's my apple core," says Tabitha... "Yes," says man, "Do you have any more apples?" (What?) "Any other fruit?"... uh, 3 apples, a banana, (a twix and some strawberry laces... ). Should we not have apples? Seems too perfect to have your fruit confiscated as you enter America... funny Americans... (I would have more sympathy if they were an island, but seeing as how they share the longest land border of any country any where in the world with Canada, it seems unliekly that confiscating fruit at the border would achieve much biodiversity-wise...).

Anywayz, the man, who by now was simply making fun of us for all of our illicit fruit smuggling, now asked our permission to search the car for the other fruit and anything else we should't have. It seemed rather redundant to be asking our permission now, since he'd clearly already searched the car, but he was very nice (and also scary) so we let him go about his business.

Apparently our apples had the requisit labels and were allowed to continue their journey into America with us. So, apple-smuggling complete, we left the shiny, courteous shores of Canada, and entered the new found wilds of America-land.

(It's interesting to note the difference between American and Canadian border customs. Upon entering America we were questioned very closely about our suspect fruit consumption - all these damned Canadians and their healthy food. Upon returning to Canada they didn't feel the need to question out diet, but did ask us whether we were carrying legal or illegal firearms, drugs or any kind or any weapons. Priorities people. )

So, having made it into the States, we spent the next couple of hours on quiet highways in the rain, enjoying the knowledge that while it might look kinda similar, we were in a whole new country. Around 11pm we arrived into Seattle and settled into our hotel for a cold (we didn't figure out the heating until the next day...), but comfortable and well deserved night's sleep.

The next morning we woke up to stunning sunshine and blue skies. Out of our hotel room window, we could just about make out Seattle's Space Needle. The perfect day to go exploring. But like I said earlier - priorities. The hotel had breakfast included, so first order of the day was make-your-own waffles, with bagels (and bad american tea). You could even have maple syrup AND whipped cream on you waffle, if you could stomach such a concoction that early in the morning.

Our hotel was only a few blocks walk from Seattle's touristy stuff (in fact, most stuff was only a few blocks from anywhere - the centre of Seattle is even smaller than the centre of Vancouver, so most stuff is pretty easy to get to. Just down the road we encountered a scene that I think Seattle's 1962 World's Fair would have been proud of - spacy and American and 'modern' (in the old sense) in lashings all at once.


However, spacy and impressive as that was, to be honest, my attention was somewhat more distracted than is strictly reasonable, by the giant pink elephant turning around and around on the other corner of the road:

I mean, it was a very cool elephant. I even took a picture of it from the top of the space needle, but thought that maybe if I posted it up here, that would have come off as a little obsessive. Still. Pink. Elephant. :D

And so begins the tour.

This is Hannah, and her friend Linsey, who was out visiting for a couple of weeks, being excellently touristy, and getting all excited about space needles and satellite dishes, very much setting the tone of the day.

Seattle's 'Space Needle' was basically built to be Seattle's very own Eiffel tower (or if you believe men in black, might be somekind of a govenment conspiracy to cover up the visitations of aliens with their UFOs, which, looking at it does seem imensely plausible...) During the World's Fair apparently 2.3 million visitors paid a slightly extortionate amout of money for 2 fourty-three second elevator rides, as large numbers of people, us schmucks included, do today. To be honest, while the view at the top is very pleasant, there isn't actually all that much to look at - i kind of think that the space needle is the most interesting thing to look at in the Seattle sky line, and in that sense you're better off not being in it, but it was worth it nonetheless. I especially like the interative screens they have to tell you about different areas of the city, and the plaques telling you about the design and the World's Fair itself.

The structure is built to withstand a 9.1 richter earthquake - which is starting to look just as well given what's just happened in Japan. There are 25 lightening rods on the top to mitigate any lighting damage, and it will withstand hurricane force winds. The whole thing is quite impressive really. Like I said though, the view's nice, but Seattle doesn't have the best skyline in the world for looking at.


One thing that the Space Needle have done about as well as anyone possibly could have is setting up merchandise and selling great quanities of it in the gift shop. You can get Space Needle *anything*. For example - i had to take a picture, i just couldn't quite believe it - they have their own 'Needlicious' fudge concession...


I mean, fudge? That's about as random (and yummy) as it gets...

Anywayz, maybe my favourite building in Seattle wasn't the tower, but the building next to it. A big shiny thing that I took to be modelled on cloth, or something - i wasn't quite sure, but wikipedia (reliably?) informs me that it's broadly modelled on a smashed up six-string guitar (Hendrix stylee), which I guess I can kind of see... ? In any case, it's very colourful, smooth, shiny and rather cool.


The Experience Music Project (and Science Fiction Hall of Fame) was a well spent $15 (though my favourite part of the whole thing really was just the building itself).


Inside there are exhibitions about artists and music that have come out of the Pacific North West, a semi-permanent Jimi Hendrix exhibit, and some interesting audio-visual stuff. We completely skipped the Science fictiony bit since the current theme is Battlestar Galactica, which none of us had ever seen...






Down the centre of the museum there's an awesome sculpture made with more guitars that I think i've seen in my whole life. quite what the point was, i'm not entirely sure, but it was quite cool, nonetheless.


Undoubtedly the best bit of the museum is upstairs where they have interactive programs to learn the basics of rock intruments (and a theremin!) and mini recording studios. It was pretty awesome, although, it made me miss the piano...


Another cool feature of the building itself is that the monorail goes straight through the middle of it. The monorail is a bit pointless really since it only takes you a few blocks, but I guess I can at least now say I've been on one, not just build them in Theme Park.


By about half past two, we realised that we should perhaps actually see some of Seattle rather than spending all day inside on drum machines. We also needed to eat something. At this point we headed (on the monorail!) to another of Seattles landmark locations - Pike Place Market, which, to be honest, I found pretty underwhelming (Although, I don't doubt that if you like fish, it might have been pretty impressive). Basically it was like Vancouver's Granville Island, but not as good - basically, I've been spoilt! We did, however, come across the 'original' Starbucks around there, whereupon much excitement of course ensued.



Next we headed to Pioneer Square (above). This is basically the oldest surviving part of Seattle. Curiously, it's actually built on an even older part, which was ruined after a big earthquake at the turn of the century. You can go on tours to visit the under ground city - much like in edinburgh - and it's widely agreed that this is well worth it, but as it turned out the timings didn't quite work for us and we were a bit worn out, so instead we grabbed cake and hot chocolate in a cafe instead...

I couldn't decide if I liked Pioneer Square. Much like Vancouver's Gastown - which looks very similar, but has been more gentrified - Pioneer Square is a hub of homeless people and drug addicts, which doesn't exactly set the atmosphere, but they don't seem to cause undue problems either. However, it's also the most atmospheric bit of Seattle that we visited and could be really nice if some more attention were put on investment in the area. To me, this was a theme true of many areas of Seattle. A lot of areas have either been nice at some point, but left to degenerate, or there's been half-hearted attempts at re-generation which haven't quite come to fruition in the way they could. This was true around our hostel, which was obviously a shiny, happening area in the sixties, but doesn't seem to have updated since.

The waterfront is another area that seems to have been half heartedly improved an then ignored. The wharfs are alright, but then there are park areas that have been locked up and neglected, and large swathes of land that don't appear to be used for anything - they could be made so pleasant. However, the most frustrating thing about the waterfront is that the Pike Place market, the downtown sky scrapers and the historic and picturesque Pioneer Square area are all right next to it, but the areas are completely cut off from the waterfront and vice versa because there is a bloody great double decker highway built through the middle of it for as far as the eye could see!

A la:



There are beautiful buildings just behind this concrete monstrosity and whoever put it there should have been shot!

Rant over. There was in fact ample quirky little artistic things around to somewhat make up for other idiots. Continuing a theme from previous posts, I found more nice wall art/murals:

Isn't that just sooo much nice than just having the side of a building? :D

We also came across a penguin on our way home from dinner.


Very cool.

So, that was more or less that for day one of our road trip. All very sleepy, we checked directions to Mount Baker the next day and formed our plans (which, admittedly, revolved entirely around the fact that we wanted to have waffles for breakfast again, but how else is one supposed to make plans?).

Day two: coming soon.