Sweltering, Sizzling & Sleepless in Seattle!

We arrived in Seattle and checked into our apartment in Capitol Hill, a bustling little community about a half hour's walk from the centre of Seattle. We were expecting cooler weather with perhaps a chance of the rain that Seattle is famous for! Instead we arrived at the start of a mini heatwave and have had temperatures in the high 90's and even 103 one day! Not having air conditioning in our apartment (Seattle, like the UK, is not used to such temperatures!) we have been sweltering in the heat, along with the locals! One way we found to cool down was to take a boat trip, so we took a Washington State Ferry over to Bainbridge Island for the day. Quaint little place with just one main street full of cafes, restaurants, gift shops and such like. However we did spot a good place to stop for (a rather large!) pot of tea. We also visited a Japanese Tea Garden in Washington Park where there was a lake inhabited by a few turtles and a whole shoal of huge Koi Carp. The Big Daddy of them all was the one in bright orange in the photo. He would swim by the little turtles and send them spinning around in the opposite direction! It was a great place for finding a shady spot under a tree and spending an hour or so in the heat of the day. Another interesting place we visited was Fremont, a neighbourhood of Seattle. We got a bus from downtown as we had heard it was a quirky little place worth visiting. We met some new friends at the bus stop there as you can see! CK had a one sided conversation with a lady and her baby and I tried to get the attention of the guy at the end but I'm afraid he was only interested in his book! Just walking down the streets we came across a hedge cut in the shape of a baby dinosaur and a rocket stuck on the side of a building. It's actually built from a 1950's era Cold War rocket missile fuselage. After a failed attempt at getting the rocket up into space, it was finally attached to the side of the building in 1994. Then we visited the giant Troll who lives under one of the highway bridges - now that's quirky! When you hear what the town motto is though it all starts to make sense. The Fremont motto is De Libertas Quirkus (The Freedom to be Peculiar!) The last couple of days we walked down to the Seattle Centre Park to get a close up view of the Space Needle and had another wander around Pike Place Market - a great place for gazing at all the produce on sale, including the famous Fish Market where fish of all shapes and sizes (mainly huge!) are on sale. Also a good place for getting free food! Seattle in general is very good on that score as we have found that if you stand in one place for long enough someone will come up and feed you! Whether it's Pike Place Market or the local grocery store, we have been offered numerous slices of peaches, chocolate cherries, cookies, muffins, ice cream, cooked salmon, cheese, honey, fudge and more! We love Seattle!

The Big Wedding on the Big Boat in the Big Apple!

When I say the Big wedding, there were only 3 people there, but it was a Big deal, and the best wedding I have ever been to in my life! The wedding weekend started for me after I abandoned Julie in San Francisco and arrived in New York for a reunion with my brother and his partner - David & Ruth were already enjoying New Yorks delights as they arrived the day before me and had already sampled the famous cheesecake several times I believe! Next day I was treated to lunch at Tavern On The Green, a famous outdoor New York restaurant in Central Park, and then we walked around the whole park for the rest of the day! In the evening, again I was treated to dinner and then a Broadway show - one of my favourites "Mamma Mia" and what a show it was! As you can see, Ruth and I were very excited and delighted with the show, so much so that we couldn't stop singing and dancing. Of course, we had to go and see the best view of New York from the Rockerfeller Centre the next day-it cetainly has the Wow factor of a full 360degree view of the city, and the Empire State Building from there is is awesome. The day of the wedding arrived and we all got ready while quaffing champagne and eating chocolates in The New York Palace Hotel where David & Ruth were being spoiled - if you look behind us you can catch a glimpse of the amazing view they had from their bedroom. The wedding took place aboard "World Yacht" and the ceremony was simple and beautiful. After Mr and Mrs Kerr had performed their first dance as a married couple, (accompanied by rapturous applause from some japanese tourists, more on that later) we had a gorgeous meal and the twilight views of the city to enjoy for the next 4 hours as we sailed down the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty, and it was truly spectacular! And those japanese tourists could not get enough of David & Ruth and took so many photos that we lost count! We later found out that they were all dentists, and were been treated to this trip by their boss, all the way from Tokyo! It was an unforgettable weekend, and I was honoured to be present on such a special and memorable day. David and Ruth spoiled me rotten and I loved every minute of their company. I didn't want to leave them, but I flew back to San Francisco anyway to meet up with JK and continue our travels in the USA.

Solo in San Francisco!

San Francisco was our next stop and time for me to go solo for awhile! CK was there for the first couple of days and the last day but in between she jetted off to New York for David & Ruth's wedding (David being her brother for those of you who don't know!) Details of her New York trip in the next blog! Had a great little room in San Francisco. It was only a budget hotel and one of those where you had to share the toilets and showers (not really a problem but better once you'd worked out the best time to have a shower when nobody else was having one - at least then you could get in when they were quite clean!) In the room we had 2 beds, a TV, fridge, microwave, sink and free WiFi! We also had a nice view of the street outside. Here's the view from the window of our room with the tall, green triangular apartment building opposite. Bit noisy in the mornings, especially as the San Francisco Fire Brigade seemed to surge past, horns blaring at least 3 times every day! One of the first things we did when we arrived was walk along the waterfront and get our first view of Alcatraz! At least it was my first view as Connie has been before with her mum! It was quite a misty day that first day which added to the excitement of seeing it really - great to see it looming up out of the fog! We visited Ghirardelli Square, home of the famous chocolate shop! Great if you're feeling peckish as when you walk through the shop they are usually handing out free samples! When CK was in New York I decided to spend a day zooming around on the cable cars (or trams as we know them!) You could get a day pass and go all over, in particular up and down the most steepest of the streets! When the trams approached everyone surged out onto the road and jumped on, grabbing a seat where they could or hanging onto the sideboards. I loved doing that as it was great to hang out from the side and see the view ahead - especially when descending one of the steep hills! I visited Postcard Lane another day where there is a particularly attractive row of Victorian houses that have been preserved. Another highlight was Lombard Street, the famous crooked street, where the cars have to zigzag down the hill from top to bottom. Amazing to see - there were constantly cars pouring down the hill but I suspect they were mainly tourists doing it for the fun of it rather than people who actually needed to drive down it! One thing I was especially hoping to see was Golden Gate Bridge which is iconic San Francisco! But every day it was shrouded in the mist that San Francisco is famous for! Despite clear blue skies and sunshine everywhere else there was a strip of low mist that hung annoyingly through the middle of the bridge so you could only see the bottom and occasionally the top tips of it! I went for a walk to see it anyway but didn't manage to see it in its full glory. Never mind, maybe next time! Just before CK returned from New York I took a trip over to Alcatraz. You get a great view of the San Francisco skyline once over there and it was amazing how close to the mainland it looked! The boat trip was only about 12-15 minutes and you could quite understand how the inmates must have thought they had a good chance of escaping to the mainland. Apparently it's not the distance that's the problem but the currents which are very swift and deadly. Also the water is freezing cold! I did read something in a guide book which said that Alcatraz was the only prison who allowed the prisoners hot showers - to make sure that they never got accustomed to cold water! You could do an Audio Tour once there which was good as it led you round the prison telling you stores about what it was like and what happened in different parts etc. We got to see a typical cell (that is a photo of the cell below, not our room!!) and the isolation block with the "hole" as it was known where no prisoner ever wanted to be placed! My only disappointment was that we didn't get to see Al Capone's cell, seemingly because nobody knew the exact location of it. There was a quote on one of the walls that I particularly liked which said, "If you break the rules you go to prison ... if you break the prison rules you go to Alcatraz!" I think that says it all! All in all it was a fascinating trip! When CK returned from New York she filled me in on the wedding details at a cafe we discovered on our first day there - The Boudin Bakery which makes the famous San Francisco Sourdough bread that we have come to know and love! It's delicious and you can get bread bowls full of soup or chilli. I went for the Clam Chowder Soup and CK ordered the chilli. Great too because you get to eat the bowl as well (if you can manage it!) That means no washing up either - you can't get better than that!

The Grand Canyon

After leaving LA it was next stop Flagstaff, Arizona whose main road is part of the famous Route 66. Our first taste of small town America. Although have to admit that we were really only there because it was a good base for visiting the Grand Canyon! (No offence to anyone from Flagstaff!) It was a perfectly nice place and fortunately we weren't staying too near the Amtrak train line as with an average of 80 freight trains passing through every day it could get very noisy! Even staying in Flagstaff it was still a 2 hour drive to get to the Grand Canyon National Park by Shuttle Bus. But when we got there - what a magnificent view! I am finding it hard to describe exactly what it was like because it was quite hard to take in the vastness of it all, the immensity - it was absolutely ENORMOUS! It was definitely worth the two day return trip from Los Angeles and also worth the 20 minutes of scary turbulence on the flight coming into Arizona as we ran into all the hot air! Once we arrived we hopped on and off the free shuttle buses which took you to various different parts of the Canyon to see one spectacular view after another. You could do hikes right down into the Canyon but because of the intense heat (well into the 90's!) it was advised to go before 10am or after 4pm. Being as the only time we were there was between 10am to 4pm we just stuck to the rim walks on the top where the air was tad bit cooler (but only slightly!) My photos do not really capture the enormity of what we were looking at - hard to know where to start with such a vast landscape! But hopefully it gives you a little bit of a flavour of it. It certainly was one of the most impressive sights we have seen on our trip and as you can see - even the little chipmunk was keen to get a close up view!

Living it up in LA!

Well, here we are in Beverly Hills! Never thought I would be saying that, being as we were supposed to be staying in Santa Monica, but that's another story. Last minute change of plans! It took a few days to get over the jet lag as we flew from west to east from Bangkok, over Japan to Los Angeles. The first few days we hardly slept at all but think we have now more or less got back into the groove! We love strolling along the streets around here and seeing how the other half live! We are only minutes from Rodeo Drive but as far as that's concerned it has been window shopping only as you might imagine! We have lost count of all the Rolls Royces (mostly soft tops!), Bentleys, Ferraris and such like that we have seen every day - more than a lifetime's worth I should think! Here's a couple of the most spectacular ones - a yellow Rolls Royce parked up on Rodeo Drive and a rather fabulous looking car that we saw today (no idea what kind so if any car mad people out there can put a name to it do let us know!) Feel sure there might have been someone famous inside it but due to the blacked out windows couldn't see a thing! Must have been an uncommon sight even for Beverly Hills as everyone else was stopping to stare as well! A couple of days ago we went on a tour of Hollywood on one of those open top double decker buses. Guess who we bumped into on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe! Fancy that! You can see CK having a bit of a group hug with them in the photo! We then spent a bit of time checking out the names on the pavement stars (some of them anyway as there are hundreds of them!) Here's me with Keanu Reeves (the nearest I will probably ever get to him!) and CK with Kevin Spacey. Well, you only come to Hollywood once in a lifetime! We also visited Santa Monica which we loved! We went a couple of times and on Saturday there was an open air food market which you could wander through and get samples of most of the food on display - Mmmm! We went for a walk along the famous Santa Monica pier where we were informed (had forgotten this!) that that was where Tom Hanks finished his running stint in the film "Forrest Gump" before he just 'kept on running'!! There's even a restaurant on the pier called the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company - yes you've guessed it - a speciality shrimp restaurant! Santa Monica has a great vibe to it and is quite refined really compared to its neighbour Venice Beach where we went next! There's a walkway along the beach from Santa Monica which takes about half an hour or so and as you approach Venice Beach the ambience changes to something very different! It's got quite a hippy culture with all kinds of weird and wonderful street performers and oddball characters, a small percentage of which are bumbling along talking to themselves! There's a long road along the beach with all kinds of unique shops on one side and street stalls on the other side and as you negotiate your way along through the crowds there are bikini clad girls strumming on guitars with their Blackberrys stuck down the side(!) Bob Marley music playing in the background and all kinds of strange smells assaulting your nostrils as you wander along! We wouldn't have missed it for the world - definitely a 'must see' if you are ever over this way! It's like being back in the 60's. in the middle of a Brazilian street market and downtown Kingston Jamaica all in one go! Amazing!