23/05/10

Today started with rain, no surprises there. It had been raining for most of the night too. Just great for wandering around Seattle. We got up and dug out the waterproof coats and got going to a park and ride lot in a nearby neighbourhood called Renton. From there we got a bus into the actual city. We were very impressed by the system they have; the buses are normal buses that drive on the road for the outer parts of the city then they drive into tunnels and share platforms with the metro trains that serve the city. A really neat way of getting into the city centre I thought.

From the cool bus stop/train station thing we wandered over to the famous Pike Place Market, the oldest market in the US. I have heard good things about the market from various places, notably Stephen Fry's American Road Trip. What a place. So much energy. There are three levels to the market and loads of stalls selling food, clothes, trinkets, toys... They even had a proper comic book store and a coin collectors store. Most of the food stalls offered samples of what they were selling, so we ambled around trying lots of the local produce. I liked the strawberry and scotch bonet chilli jam, awesome. At the entrance to the market they have the “world famous” flying fish stall where people order the fish that they want and the workes throw the fish to centre where it is weighed and wrapped etc. It is great, the stall guys all call the name of the purchaser and the type of fish before throwing the fish and all including some of the onlookers yell and cry when the through is complete. Really good fun. We tried a sample of their fish too and it was really nice, but expensive. Pike Place is also the home of the world's first Starbucks, so I had to get a coffee there. After the market we took a bus over to The Seattle Centre, to see the Space Needle and of course grab our Washington state geocache.

We then headed back towards our car before the time ran out on our parking ticket, we ended up only making it by 5 minutes. We are now back on the road heading towards Yellowstone National Park and have been through some fantastic scenery already. Now for the next leg of our journey, from the west coast back to the east. We will now not see the sea again for a good while and also, we won't see another decent sized city until Chicago. Lots of big open country for now now.

Cube out.