I have to say that the thing that impressed me the most on this entire trip happened before I even got to San Jose, let alone Seattle or Bellingham. When the airbus I was in was around Gilroy, I happened to look up from The Economist that I was reading and saw this big banner draped over an overpass that read: "Robert, go to prom w/ me?". It had no name listing who it was from, but even still, whoever posted that has guts. That is truly awesome.
I am here to report that the stories about Seattle being super-rainy are false. Granted, there was water falling out of the sky several times when I was in Seattle, but in such minute quantities that you really cannot call that stuff rain. Drizzle maybe, sure, but rain? No, that's not rain. I just wanted to state that for the record.
Whoever designed the streets of Seattle must have either been on crack, or really enjoyed messing with people. Maybe both. There were some parts of Seattle in Seattle Center where I swear, the street signs must have been thrown down by people playing pin the street sign on the mountain, and then arranging the streets themselves around them. It made me long for the one way streets of Monterey. I have to admit, Seattle really didn't impress me like I was hoping it would. I like NYC much better personally, although I wouldn't want to live in either city, but that's another matter entirely.
Mind you, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy my vacation. I stayed in the
Green Tortoise Hostel, which is an awesome place to stay. Definitely worth booking in advance though, the four person rooms are much nicer than the six or eight person rooms, which are all that were available if you need something that day.
During my stay at the Green Tortoise, I met people from Hawaii, Rhode Island, Austria, Australia, South Africa, Italy, and England. There are probably other areas that I'm not even aware of. Almost everyone I met there was on a long term trip, I was the exception with my week long vacation in that resepect. I also learned at the hostel that at first, a South African accent sounds similar to an Australian accent. Although this was only at first blush, after a few minutes of chatting with the South African girl, it didn't sound at all Australian to me any more.
I absolutely loved what the Australian roommate of mine said to me as I was getting ready to head back to Monterey about work: "Enjoy the interval between your next travel." Okay, I don't have phonograpic memory, so that might not be an exact quote, but it's pretty close. I just loved that description of work, it's such a great one. And it is the way I'm trying to live my life; I learned that from my mom.
By far the most memorable part of my stay in Seattle was the
Underground Tour. I ended up buying a book written by the Bill Speidel guy who started the tour when I finished the tour, and I am throughly enjoying it. (The book is called
Sons of Profits, for those of you curious.) It was a 90 minute tour lead by a lady named Terry. We got to see, literally, the Seattle underground. The sidewalks in Seattle are hollow, there's the sidewalk up above, and an underground area down below. It was this area that we toured around. Really, no words of mine would give an adequate explanation of this tour, my pictures won't either, unfortunately. With all the humor involved, you'd need video to get a good solid feel for what the tour is like. I highly recommend it for anyone going to Seattle.
Note that I did say Seattle in that last paragraph. The most fun and memorable part of the whole vacation was Wednesday when I got to meet Jen (
justplainjen) in person. I've known Jen for the past eight years now online, but this was the first time we've got to meet. I've been wanting to visit Seattle for years, and I knew Bellingham was fairly close by, so I figured it'd be only natural to work both into the trip if I could. I emailed Jen about it, she was interested, so we arranged to meet on Wednesday. I was amused by her first comment upon meeting me in person, she said, "You're bigger than I thought". Which I suppose makes sense, since while I do have pictures of myself up online, none of them really give a good indication of my height. (For those of you who haven't met me in person, I'm 6'2" without shoes on.)
Jen toured me around Bellingham, taking me to some absolutely beautiful spots. Bellingham is a beautiful city, really, I wouldn't mind living there myself. I ended up taking a grand total of 2100 pictures even on my vacation. If it weren't for Bellingham, it'd have probably ended up being half that. We went to a park along the ocean, a rock garden, two restaurants, and a boardwalk area along a different part of the ocean. Oh, and she took me to a good spot for viewing the sunset, and we took pictures there until the sun finished setting. Although I think my favorite sunset shot out of all the ones I took was taken Thursday evening on the Amtrak back to Seattle.
The rocks are clearly much smarter in Bellingham than they are in Monterey. In Bellingham, the rocks banded together and created themselves a garden, and a bunch of sculptures in the middle of the garden. That rock garden was the spot where we took a picture that's almost inevitable when two photographers get together. Jen took a picture of me taking a picture of Jen. It would have been great to have a helicopter's eye view of that to see both of us shooting each other.
It was interesting how the restaurant experience worked out in Bellingham. Somehow, I managed to get utterly an utterly messy sandwich for lunch, and an equally messy burger for dinner. They were delicious! As Ivan said, the messier sandwiches are, the better they are; I'd agree with him, this is probably true. We went to
Boundary Bay Brewary for dinner, I don't remember the name of the lunch place. This was where I got to meet Ivan, Jen's husband, and Torrae, Eli, and Kris.
They're all a great bunch of people. Eli drew a monster and then gave the drawing to me, which was nice of him. Hopefully there wasn't any symbolism involved there. And Torrae did a little medidating moment which Jen says she never did before. I said it must have been osmosis from my Dalai Lama book. This particular book is called
How to Practice - I finished it in Seattle, and it's an excellent book.
I was throughly impressed by Ivan's programming knowledge. I knew Jen referred to him as her computer person, but I hadn't realized that he knew programming in addition to the general computer knowledge that I had assumed she was talking about. Plus he's a Monty Python fan, so he obviously has good taste.
All in all, it was a great vacation, although I must admit I was frustrated when I had to leave Bellingham. Jen's a good friend, and it's frustrating to live a thousand miles away from one of my good friends, but oh well. I much prefer this to not knowing her at all.
Edited to add (at 7:02 PM, May 3rd): I checked my credit card bill after this and saw the bill for the lunch. The restaurant is called Avenue Bread & Deli, they've got absolutely delicious sandwiches. Highly recommended if you're ever in Bellingham.
