Seattle, Washington

On Saturday 30th July we travelled from Vancouver to Seattle via the Bolt Bus. The Bolt Bus is owned by Greyhound, but is a lot cheaper. It was about 3 hours by bus and nice comfortable seats, power outlets for your gadgets, plus free WiFi made for a very good trip. One of Will's colleagues, Karthik, had kindly offered to put us up at his apartment for our 3 nights in Seattle, and he was waiting for us at the bus station with his wife Divya. Karthik works at Microsoft and had helped Will arrange to give a talk there on Monday. Divya cooked an awesome vegetarian curry with chapati for dinner, then later on we went out for some amazing ice-cream at Molly Moon's, which is bit of a Seattle institution. You know it's good when you arrive in the evening and there is a long (but thankfully fast-moving) queue stretching out onto the pavement!

Karthik and Divya kindly gave up their whole day on Sunday to act as tour guides and show us around their city. We started with the Pike Place Market which was pretty jammed full of people. I get the feeling it is like that most of the time... The basement was fill of all types of quirky and interesting shops. 

The gum wall was one of the weirder 'tourist attractions' we visited!

On the same street as the market is the original Starbucks coffee shop. It was interesting to see where it all began, before the company achieved world coffee domination, but we felt no need to join the crazy long line to actually go inside. Apparently, unless you arrive at the crack of dawn, there are always queues to get inside.

Next up was the Chihuly Garden and Glass museum. This place was recommended to us by Juliet when we were in Vancouver, and it was totally amazing, my favourite thing in Seattle. I'm not alone in these thoughts, as it is also Trip Advisor's top-ranked thing to do in Seattle. I struggled to choose which photos to put up, so have ended up with loads. Apologies if ornamental glass really isn't your thing!

These two wooden rowboats were gorgeous. A real riot of colour.

The museum is in a great location right next to the Space Needle, which made for some nice shots of it through the glasshouse.

The garden area was also very cool. If I ever find myself back in Seattle I'll return to this place at night, as the glass would also look awesome all lit up.

There were also several official photographers wandering around the museum. They were happy to take your photo with any background that you wanted. You then got given a code which you used to retrieve the pics and either download them to your device or email them to yourself, all for free. It made a nice change from the over-priced tourist pics on offer at a lot of major attractions! It was nice to get a picture of the four of us.

By now it was lunchtime so we grabbed a bite from the nearby food-hall and took it to the park. There was an outdoor performance of 'Hamlet' happening, but the sound wasn't great so it was pretty hard to follow. It was fun watching kids cool off in the fountain.

The tour continued after lunch as we walked past the striking EMP Museum building. It stands for Experience Music Project and supposedly celebrates music and pop culture, but it wasn't on our 'to-do' list. We've got to leave some things to do for when we return to Seattle... There was a very cute Ben & Jerry's ice-cream cart parked outside.

The Space Needle was on the must-do list. For a while, 'Frasier' was one of my favourite TV shows. It is set in Seattle and the Space Needle features on the opening credits, so it was very cool seeing it in person. The website is also very cool and well worth checking out for some great views and info on Seattle.

It takes 41 seconds in an elevator to take you to the observation deck at 520 feet. From here there were stunning 360 degree views of the city.

Next up was a couple of parks for more great views. I can't remember the name of this park but it had amazing views, and was in a super swanky, leafy part of town with incredible multi-million dollar houses on show.

I definitely remember the name of the Gas Works Park however. It's not difficult to see why it got its name..

This park had lovely views, looking over Lake Union, back towards the city. It was a lovely spot to sit and chill out for a bit, and watch the sea-planes taking off and landing.

By now it was dinner time and Divya had sussed out a super cute little Turkish restaurant that was nearby. It proved to be a great choice with fresh tasty food and some pretty darn awesome baklava for dessert. The restaurant also happened to be nearby another weird and wonderful Seattle attraction... The Fremont Troll!

After dinner, and paying our respects to the troll, we decided to return to the Gas Works Park to check out the Seattle skyline at nights. Finally we returned home, tired but happy after an epic day of sightseeing.

On Monday Will went into work with Karthik and spent the day at Microsoft with him. It's an incredible set-up they have at the Redmond Campus, it's more like a small village. More than 30 000 employees work at that site alone. I do love the fact that Will gave his presentation on his ancient, battered and beaten-up Microsoft Surface Pro 2! If that doesn't mean much to you, the Pro 2 was released in 2013, which is a long time ago in the techie world! I'm currently writing this blog on a nice shiny Surface Pro 4 which came out late last year... Divya also headed off to work early in the morning, so I had the day to myself. My plan was to catch a bus back into the city center and check out The Art Of The Brick exhibition which was on at the Pacific Science Center. 

All I can say is WOW, what a cool exhibition with everything made of Lego. Some of the pieces took the artist, Nathan Sawaya, months to create. 

This below is probably his most well-known piece of work, and is the image used to advertise the show around the world.

Having seen Michelangelo's 'David' in Florence, this was actually quite an impressive rendition!

There was also an interesting gallery where Sawaya had created everyday items out of Lego, then inserted them into 'real-life' scenes and photographed them. For instance, you can see the red Lego towel on the right, then to the left you can just see it in the photograph.

He also recreated other famous works of art with Lego, although I didn't find the paintings as impressive as his original sculptures.

From the Science Center I walked back to the Pike Place Market. On Divya's recommendation, lunch was a grilled cheese sandwich at Beecher's Cheese. You know it's fresh when you can watch the cheese being made right in front of your eyes!

I then had another wander around the market. There are amazing flower stalls where you can get gorgeous bunches of flowers for $10-$15. If I lived in Seattle I think I'd be buying fresh flowers every week or two! I bought a bouquet for Divya and Karthik as a small thank-you for having us. It was interesting walking to the bus-stop with them, and then holding them on the bus, I got SO many comments about how beautiful they were!

The timing worked out that Will and Karthik were able to pick me up from the bus station on their way home from work, and Divya also arrived home at a similar time. Dinner was some very good Thai at a local place. We then headed to Reuben's Brews for a couple of Seattle's finest to end our trip (and also warm up for Portland, which is also renown for its craft beer). Those who know my taste in beer will have no problem picking out which one is mine below! I enjoyed two excellent porters.

So, that was Seattle... We were only there for 3 nights, but we managed to see and do loads, and had a great time whilst doing so. Most of that was due to Karthik and Divya who proved to be excellent tour guides. We really appreciated all of their outstanding hospitality. Hopefully we can repay the favour in Wellington one day.

Vancouver, BC

We had a good flight into Vancouver on Sunday 24th July. From the airport we caught the train to the Waterfront Station, then the SeaBus over to North Vancouver. We were staying the first couple of nights with Juliet, Will's Godmother. Juliet was waiting for us at Lonsdale Quay, and drove us the short distance back to her place.  

On Monday Will was up nice and early to catch the SeaBus back over to the Convention Centre for the start of the IEEE WCCI conference. This stands for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers World Congress on Computational Intelligence, which is bit of a mouthful! 

Juliet and I had a lovely day together. After I enjoyed a very nice lie-in we drove to Ambleside Park in West Vancouver to check out the action on the large duck pond and walk on the beach. There were good views of the Lions Gate Bridge, looking back towards Downtown.  

Next we drove up Cypress Mountain to check out the views. In winter this is one of three ski hills easily accessible from the city.

Our last stop was to Horseshoe Bay where we stopped at a cute little cafe for coffee and a bite to eat. From here we could watch the ferries departing and arriving to/from the surrounding islands.

Juliet has a couple of gorgeous Burmese cats and Bluey, above, just LOVED having her tummy tickled!

On Tuesday we had a day outing to Whistler, which hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics. Juliet's sister Hilary and brother-in-law Michael joined us for the day. The purpose of the trip was for Juliet to get a medical scan, as the waiting time was way shorter than if she'd tried to get it done in Vancouver. The drive was well under 2 hours, and was very scenic. This was more prime bear-spotting territory, and I kept my eyes peeled, but to no avail...

The scan was completed nice and quickly. We enjoyed a very tasty lunch at one of the numerous restaurants, then had a good wander around Whistler Village. Some of the ski lifts were running for the benefit of the mountain-bikers who had taken over the mountain.

On Tuesday night Will and I moved into the conference hotel, the Pinnacle Hotel, Harbourfront for three nights. Will had a huge day on Wednesday, being involved in the presentation of 4 papers which started at 8 am in the morning, so only being a 5 minute walk from the conference venue was a big help.

I spent Wednesday wandering around Vancouver. I took the cute little ferry over to the Granville Island Market and had lunch over there. There were signs around the market warning of the aggressive birds, but I was still surprised when I was eating my lunch on a bench by the water and a seagull swooped down and swiped a bit of food from my fork before I had a chance to get it into my mouth! It was still a very nice lunch with a view...

I love coming across community gardens when I'm exploring cities, I'm always interested in what people are growing. As you can see in the background below, Vancouver was gearing up for its annual Pride Festival that coming Saturday. It would have been fun to attend but unfortunately we were leaving town on the Saturday morning.

However, we were in town for the middle session of the 'Honda Celebration of Light' festival on the Wednesday night. This is an annual event where three countries 'compete' in a fireworks competition over three different nights. It so happened that Australia were the featured country on the Wednesday.

It was a glorious evening and I enjoyed walking to English Bay, along with the thousands of others! This event is crazy popular, over 1 million people viewed the fireworks over the three nights. Will had his official conference banquet that evening, so because I was by myself I managed to get a prime spot on the grassed area just back from the beach, pretty much right in front of the barge that the fireworks were going to be released from.

I arrived around 8:30 pm, and the fireworks weren't due to be set off until 10 pm, but already the place was packed. I passed the time reading my kindle, enjoying the sunset and watching the display put on by the fire boats.

The fireworks were actually spectacular. I can be a bit 'bah humbug' towards them at times, as I think it's just a ridiculous amount of money going up in smoke! However, if Aussie wanted to burn all that cash, the least I could do was sit back and enjoy it... Here's a selection of pics.

I also took a couple of short videos, best watched with the sound off (or at least down low) as I had a very annoying whiny kid next to me. Luckily the parents got fed up and took him home before the end!

  

After the fireworks finished I had a text from Will saying that he was in the area. He had caught a taxi to the fireworks after his conference dinner finished, along with a couple of his colleagues. We managed to meet up (no mean feat considering the huge crowds of people!) and walked back to our hotel together. We went back via the waterfront and enjoyed the night lights and sights.

It was just before midnight and we also happened to catch one of the huge big cruise ships departing the port with guidance from a tug/pilot boat.

 

On Thursday I walked to the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park and met up with Juliet. She is a volunteer at the aquarium and has been for many years. As well as getting me in for free as her guest, I also had my own personal, highly knowledgeable guide! Chester, a young false killer whale who was rescued in a really bad condition as a calf was one of my favourites.

The beluga whales fascinated me as I'd never seen a white whale before.

The dolphins were also beautiful to watch. It is crazy how high they can propel themselves out of the water.

There is an exhibition where (after thoroughly washing your hands and removing any jewellery) you can put two fingers into a shallow tank and stroke the stingrays on their back as they swim past. They were very soft, it felt like stroking thick velvet.

Here are a couple more pics. I could have included loads more, but this post is going to be long enough as it is.

After the aquarium I spent a couple of hours wandering around Stanley Park. At 405 hectares it's a huge place, and a real asset to the city having that much green space so close to downtown Vancouver. I remembered visiting the totem poles when I was last in Vancouver in 2003, right at the beginning of my OE. At that stage I had no idea I'd end up living away from NZ for 8 years and return with a British husband!

I did spot the happiest raccoon in the world, having procured a near-full bag of snacks from somewhere.

And some more wildlife...

There were lovely views looking back to downtown.

The walk back to our hotel was all along the waterfront. This is such a beautiful picturesque city. It is definitely a place Will and I would seriously consider living if an opportunity arose, it has a huge amount to offer.

Juliet actually knows the owner of the yellow houseboat in the pic below, and has attended book-club meetings there. It would be a pretty amazing place to live!

 

Friday was our last evening in Vancouver and we stayed the night with Juliet once again. We caught the train out to New Westminster and had dinner with Hilary and Michael who have a lovely apartment there overlooking the Fraser River. I had met them during our day trip to Whistler earlier in the week, and Will had actually met them in New Zealand. He briefly showed them around Wellington when they arrived on a cruise ship early in the year. Excellent company, superb food and great wine (Michael is a connoisseur of fine wine!) was a perfect way to finish off our time in Vancouver. Huge thanks are due to Juliet for her incredible hospitality and looking after us so well. Will couldn't have ended up with a better Godmother.