The second leg of my journey took me to Seattle.
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I made a mistake in Seattle - I travelled from the airport to my friends' house by bus. This in itself is not a bad thing - but I had totally failed to understand the American house numbering system and so I was faced with a 2 mile hike through suburban America (Americana 1). America really is not a place to be stuck without a car.
.Many of the buses double up as a mix of trolleybus and underground train when they get into Seattle centre.
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No sooner had I recovered from my long walk when I was bustled into a car and taken to the State Fair (Americana 2). This was a joyful little affair stack full of food stalls, horses, jacuzzi salesmen, goats, more food stalls, sheep, doughnut stalls, pigs, and more doughnut stalls.
.Most impressive to me was the display of baking, pickles, preserves, produce, and suchlike that people had entered in the various competitions (Americana 3). Being a collection of appetites on legs we came out of that salivating and I, for one, was contemplating finding the winner of the baking prize and asking for her hand in marriage...
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Americana 4 was a trip up the Space Tower - which was built for the Worlds' Fair in 1961 and has been lovingly preserved along with most of the grounds of the fair. It is a striking building and affords the best view in town.
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The grounds around the tower are still devoted to public entertainment and house one of the most splendid modern fountains I have seen.
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This fountain's jets play on and off in a sequence and the height of the jets very much depends upon how many are in operation at any one time - making this beautiful and fascinating to watch. Also fascinating to watch are the loonies who hurl themselves around the base of the fountain trying to circumnavigate it before all of the jets come back on.
.I have a message for these people: don't try it.
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Americana 5 was obtained in the centre of Seattle and was a hot dog from one of the smallest food shops I have seen outside of Tokyo.
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This was a brilliant place to eat. The lass serving had obviously been to England and verbally changed gears for me which was very welcome because I was still having trouble with American accents. The dogs were good too!
.You will see blazoned large on the poster above the counter the consuming passion of Seattle: coffee. Seattle drivers are noted for their driving skills which enable them to hold a cellphone to their ear while juggling the steering wheel and a bucket of coffee at 55 M.P.H.
.You can get so many different kinds of coffee there that your brain will be reduced to slime trying to remember all of the combinations available. I don't think there is anywhere else in the world one can buy a coffee in a bookshop and be welcome to wander the aisles whilst drinking it.
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A real delight was to start the day with a proper American Hamburger (Americana 6) at a real 1950's Drive In burger joint (Americana 7) which still made use of trays hung off of the driver's window (sadly no picture, we were in a hurry).
.This was enlivened by the burger joint being in the shadow of one of the branches of the Evil Empire (Micro$oft - Americana 8) and by driving home past Bill Gates'® new mansion.
.No trip to America is complete without an experience of the American legal system and my trip was no exception! I was privileged to attend court (Americana 9) to see a friend try and lessen the fine levied against her in an RTA.
.The judge was dispensing justice as if he was on piecework rates and the three cases prior to ours were over in minutes - all of them thrown out on technicalities. In fact the longest case was the one immediately before ours where the defendant was let off and then proceeded to tell her life story in between giving profuse thanks to God. Bless him but ¨Judge Happy¨ even sat through that with a smile.
.Our case was thrown out on a technicality too so to celebrate, we went kite flying and I spotted a rather lost school of whales. Obviously a school not in the top ten percent.
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It was on the way back from here that the second biggest rip-off of the journey occurred. Being somewhat parched we stopped at a coffee shop for some cold drinks. I was pleased at the size of the cups as the girl started to fill our order - until she filled them almost to the brim with ice and then trickled a few mouthfuls of the actual drink in.
In Poppenbüttel (a suburb of Hamburg) you can get freshly squeezed fruit cocktails. The juice bar there gives twice as much for the same money and the quality is equal, if not better. Considering that most food in America is cheaper than here and that Germany is more expensive than England - you can see why I was not impressed.
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My first experience of Seattle rain (Americana 10) so I went shopping near the University.
.This area is crammed with cafes, restaurants, and second hand emporia. Quite apart from the computer, half price, and bookshops ordinaire elsewhere - the second hand bookshops just have to be seen to be believed. I spent the entire day there filling my bags with (a) water and (b) SF books (of which some I have been seeking for the best part of a decade).
.While waiting for a bus I sheltered in a cafe and looked at my haul while partaking of an endless cup of coffee (Americana 11) and some ¨Danish¨ (Americana 12).
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Of course, we had to go to a Baseball game (Americana 10) where we saw the Seattle Mariners play some other team.
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Here I may be seen with a balanced diet - a chilli dog in either hand.
.The game was very strange. For a start, because of the huge distances, it is exceedingly rare for the visiting team to have any supporters in the crowd. As a consequence it is a very hostile audience for them so, in true English style, I made up for it with cries of ¨Well caught Sir!¨ and suchlike whenever the opposing team did well. I had to be smuggled out of the park under a blanket...
.The stadium was not well blessed with patrons to begin with but the game was so poor that people began to drift out about 45 minutes into the game. Even so, it did have some action.
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On my last day I was treated to the breakfast of champions at a diner in the middle of nowhere (Americana 14).
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Here I had ¨Chicken fried steak¨ on a plate so large that I thought that their satellite TV dish had fallen off the roof and into the kitchen.
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It's called an ¯all day breakfast¯ because it takes all day to digest it. I had indigestion all the way to Chicago.
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Overall Seattle is a pleasant place. On the plus side it is cosmopolitan, prosperous, well kept, and has some lovely places to visit. On the minus side it has terrible traffic congestion, is a bit uptight (Political Correctness has to be observed), and is becoming as expensive as the south of England for housing (not to mention cold drinks).
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Here endeth part two of the Wanderings of Allum. Part three details the descent into Hell (Chicago).
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