4 days in Seattle

So less than a week after we'd arrived in Vancouver, we decided to head off to Seattle for a mini holiday before knuckling down to find some work. Kristen (our gracious Vancouver host) had organised two-for-one train tickets for us so on Tuesday 5 April we headed off to the train station to catch our 6am train to Seattle.

Apart from the US immigration officers treating us like we'd committed a crime and grilling us on what our intentions for our stay in the US were (oh, and making us feel extremely guilty about being unemployed), the entire train travel process was fairly smooth. The views along the way were fantastic too.

We arrived in Seattle at 10am that morning and immediately realised how incredibly freezing cold the next 4 days would be. Seattle weather was pretty much Vancouver weather (10 degrees, rain) with the addition of gale force ice winds (okay, so perhaps a little dramatic) - it was freezing!!

Overall Seattle was a really nice city. Once we got over the gale force ice winds and rain at times, I found it to be a really "cool" city. Perhaps it helped a bit that Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix were both from Seattle - probably added to the "cool" factor. The people were super friendly and the shopping was pretty great. Not New York or London "great" but it was pretty great.

Me checking out the Valentino selection at Nordstrom (upmarket DJ's).

To elaborate on the shopping, we ended up spending a fair bit of time in stores because they sheltered us from the rain and cold and everything was so cheap! Steve managed to buy three pairs of Nike shoes for the price of a little more than only one pair would cost in Australia. I had a ball in Sephora (makeup store) and we went nuts on the final day in Abercrombie & Fitch (cheap jeans, great hoodies, tops etc).

Of course the entire time I was battling the Killer Canadian Flu-Cold (KCFC) which got worse as the week wore on and came to a head on our last night when we went to the baseball. Again, like the true tourists we are, we managed to buy 2 tickets to the Seattle Mariners' home game against the Cleveland Indians and bought some merchandise to wear to the game. As luck would have it we ended up sitting next to Grant from the Gold Coast! He was a Geelong supporter so we ended up having a bit of an AFL chat when the baseball got boring. It got boring when the Indians scored 10 runs in one inning and the score was 12 - 0. Unfortunately the Mariners aren't so great, but they have this one player Ichiro - pretty much the Brownie of the team. He's pretty awesome and the crowd absolutely loves him. He looks like a Japanese rock star. Anyway, we had fun cheering for him. The crowd chants "ICHI-RO" "ICHI-RO" "ICHI-RO" when he steps up to the plate. Lots of fun!

Go Mariners!

Our view of the game.

During our trip we also spent time walking around the Pike Place Markets (heaps of fresh seafood, fruit & vegies and general market things), visited the first ever Starbucks store, ate the famous mac & cheese at Beecher's, devoured clam chowder at The Crab Pot restaurant, walked underneath the city during the "Underground Tour" (you literally go down steps and walk around underneath the new city - which was built on top of existing parts of the city established much earlier) and went to the Seattle Space Needle - great views!

Seattle Space Needle.

Mmm.. Beecher's mac & cheese.

Due to the KCFC, we spent a some time inside the warmth of the hotel which marked the beginning of our obsession with my new favourite tv show - Man v. Food. I think it's on Foxtel at home on the food channel. Great show! Basically it involves this guy going to all these famous restaurants/take out places across the US and taking on their greatest food challenges (mostly eat some enormous amount of food within a limited timeframe). It was actually a struggle to watch one night when we returned to our room after dining at the Cheesecake Factory and eating pretty much double our own body weights in nachos and chicken tacos (for me) and nachos and steak and chicken (for Steven). I was so disappointed we were too full to eat dessert that night that we went back the next day for a more conservative lunch followed by my favourite - lunch dessert - brownie!

The Cheesecake Factory slogan should be 'Portion control knows no bounds!'

All systems go!

Massive fail!

Hello lunch-dessert brownie!!

Believe it or not we've both managed to lose a couple of kilos during our first weeks here but I'm pretty sure its muscle loss. As soon as I'm feeling better it's back to running and Steve is getting back into his training sessions more regularly now. No rest for the wicked!

These two posts should keep you all occupied for a little while!

x