Seattle:City of innovation

We took our time getting up this morning. It was very valuable to be able to take our time getting ready this morning. We had both been very tired and our bodies were grateful for the chance to rest. We had a leisurely breakfast. They called it a light breakfast but I enjoyed a familiar brunch of smashed avo on toast with poached eggs.

We then finalised our suitcases because we will not be accessing them again till we get home. Having left them with the concierge we headed off to the Pike Street Market which was recommended by a great many people. Neither of us was particularly overwhelmed by this market. If you know any of the major markets in Melbourne like Victoria Market, then there was nothing new about this market. We wandered around for a while and decided we had seen enough and we began to head out to catch the hop-on-hop-off bus. That was when we ran into several smaller groups from the Evergreen group with whom we had travelled. Apparently things had not gone well after we left.

There still were several people carrying coughs and cold symptoms and one of the group had become so ill she had to be hospitalised. She was declared to have the Influenza A Strain and that meant that we were all asked to watch for symptoms and treat them accordingly. The group leader for this smaller subsection of the travelling group, Kathy, had to spring into action, get hospitals organised, ensure proper medical treatment then get the woman and her companion back to the hotel in the middle of the night. Then she needed to be up and running the program for the day. She looked very tired but everyone pulled together and were in good, if tired spirits.

It was good to catch up with the others but soon after we went our separate ways. They were to go to the Boeing factory for a tour and although it was an interesting visit, most people were overtired and not really feeling excited by the prospect.

We went in search of the bus stop for our tour of the city. It was a bit of a fiasco. We would be sent somewhere only to wait until it was clear there would be no bus. We would ask again and be sent somewhere else to find the story repeated. We became quite cranky. Finally, we saw the bus and ran for it. It was worth it.

The tour took about an hour and we learned that Seattle is the home of many new giants. Not my musical tastes, but Pearl Jam and Nirvana came from here. Also Starbucks began its life as part of the Pike Street market back in the 1970s. Amazon and Microsoft have their headquarters in Seattle too and it leads the nation in the number of successful start-ups. We drove through the different regions of the city looking at architecture. Ross was very concerned that we get a picture of a 1930's building called Smith Tower. Family pride? I will have to look it up when we get home.

They have a very dramatic civic complex which I thought was quite spectacular and very organically constructed. Some of its critics thought it looked like giant dead jellyfish that had been washed up by the sea. I could happily have played for hours with the camera studying its many feature. This building stands at the base of famous Seattle Eye and beside the exhibition centre where the spectacular glasswork of Dale Chihuly was on show. I would have enjoyed spending a couple of hours just in this precinct, but time did not allow.

We got back to our hotel, picked up our bags from our chatty concierge, hopped into a taxi and went back to the airport. There it began again. Walking, followed by paperwork, walking, checking the paperwork, getting more paperwork, walking, checking, being told to put away paperwork and to carry different paperwork, then walking..... then sitting for a couple of hours before boarding. At least the Customs check here was less intrusive. In the trip from Alaska I had to go through a hypersensitive customs check. There are two systems. One is a simple walkthrough scanner. Sometimes this will require a belt or shoe removal but is generally fine. The second system is far more sensitive. You walk into a tubular glass cubicle and place your feet on two painted feet on the floor. Then you raise your arms in the air as if trying to do a star jump while remaining quite still. As you stand there a scanner whizzes around you. After you have been scanned, you step outside and wait. It seems to pick something up on almost everyone who goes through because then there is the official notification that the scan has indicated a need for a pat down.

I was so tired I was functioning largely as an automaton. Our officer was a young woman who had either been told to be stern, or was having a really grumpy day. She wrinkled her lip and muttered under her breath when she found that Ross still had some water in his drink bottle and insisted he drink it all. Then she checked my things and got concerned that I had a chocolate bar (still wrapped) in my bag. She looked at me accusingly but sent me through the machine. Of course it sent a message that I was a hardened criminal bent on the destruction of all that Americans hold dear. I was told to wait, then was told to spread my legs, raise my arms and be ready to allow her to pat me down and feel her way around my body. I did as I was told because, in my befuddled state, I seemed to have no will of my own. I had nothing to worry about, but felt strangely uncomfortable. I don't think I would have minded if she had shown a personality with a small smile. She would have been a very attractive and friendly young woman had she done so. She looked me in the eye when giving me the instruction but the eye contact was more like her searching my eyes for my comprehension or for checking my eyes to see if I was evil or drug addled. There was no human interaction in this. After this there was the drug and gunpowder wand that was tapped on me. This is not intrusive but I was feeling a bit over the whole process. It was very disconcerting.

The flights from Fairbanks then Anchorage were fine. For one of them I got a window seat so I was much more comfortable and entertained. Every other flight had had me required to sit in the middle seat because of Ross' claustrophobia. He needs to sit on an aisle seat or be able to move around unrestricted. That meant that I always felt hemmed in and looking at the back of the seat in front of me. It was lovely to have the short opportunity.

The final stage of our holiday was the trip from Seattle to Vancouver, then after another set of walking and paperwork, our trip from Vancouver to Brisbane, a short transit bus trip and then a flight to Melbourne. If I suggest that tedium and constriction got to me after 27 hours without sleep, I doubt if many would find this surprising. I managed to get about two hours on the long flight, out of sheer exhaustion, but then I was awake again until 7.30 local time. My mind is still too tired to work out what that means.

The next entry will be the final. Thank you for following this journey. Feel free to make a comment on any page and let me know if any story has touched you, made you smile, reminded you of something or whether you feel you would like to know more. The journey is over but the remembering is just beginning.Read more