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!