Seattle

After a much needed lie in (no one will ever accuse me of being Sleepless in Seattle) Kate and I ventured to Kerry Park for an elevated city skyline view. Sadly it was slightly obscured by cranes. I would later discover that due to Seattle's rapid development there are at least 17 cranes currently in use across the city. Kate had also hoped that Mt Rainier would be visible but sadly she was hiding. All in all it wasn't quite the view we had hoped for but onwards and upwards. I was on a separate mission from Kerry Park to look for a very special house. Back to my slightly sad film and TV location hunting ways I hiked up the hill in search of Meredith Grey's house. Yes another Grey's Anatomy reference I'm afraid. After finding it and taking lots of sneaky pictures whilst trying to blend in with the neighbourhood I mooched back down the hill to find Lake Union.

I arrived at Lake Union much earlier than my planned boat tour which would take me past Tom Hank's infamous house boat - my final Ephron stop of the trip. I sat in the park and watched the seaplanes land and take off from Kenmore Air. The more I watched, the more I wanted to play so needless to say I went to enquire. Astounded by the comparable cheapness to the recent helicopter ride I took over the Canyon I bit the girls hand off and looked forward to my seaplane tour around Seattle tomorrow morning. You can take the girl away from flying for 7 weeks but you can't take flying away from the girl!

Feeling very in the moment I took things a step further that afternoon and opted for a Six Gill Shark Bite cocktail on the boat which contained gin, triple sec, ginger ale and pineapple juice. I don't usually drink in the afternoon so needless to say I was rather tipsy by the time I got off the boat. I'd just had a message from Kate saying she'd found another large soft toy she could not separate from. I told her she could have it so long as I could take home the lamppost I was currently hugging in the Argosy Cruises car park. After convincing her I didn't need rescuing we reunited at the market in search of dinner. We settled for fish and chips at the pier which was an excellent choice.

From there we took the monorail to the Space Needle. The monorail is a slightly bizarre construct in Seattle. It is a very small stretch running between downtown to the Space Needle and was originally constructed as part of the 1962 World Fair which as it happens was also when the Space Needle opened. It is worth bearing in mind that this coincided with Disney's original presentation of EPCOT which was presented at the very same fair - Disney also being a massive fan of the monorail.

We learnt from our experience at the Empire State and deliberately booked a a lot on the Space Needle that got us up there just before sunset so we could appreciate the views by day and night. We had free green screen shots taken and giggled at the badly done composite - check out our green hair! You could choose your backdrop so naturally I chose the ferry boat. Sadly it would appear that despite my love of these ferries I would not get to ride on one as quite frankly there weren't going anywhere I had time to go!

After persuading ourselves that we did not need matching Space Needle hats we ventured back to the piers to admire all the neon signs in the dark - this was Kate's geek time as Seattle by night was the backdrop for her favourite video game. We also browsed in a couple of souvenir shops where Kate had to stop me from buying my own set of Grey's Anatomy scrubs.

We got back to the house late despairing at the early start we had tomorrow.En savoir plus