OT: Seattle, a travelogue: second Monday (don't worry, there's only one more, honest)

Okay, the way this day *should* have gone was that we'd get up horribly
early, taxi down to Kenmore Air on Lake Union, jump into a floatplane, fly
to Victoria BC, visit a not-totally-authentically English castle and the
museum of British Columbia and end the day with a three hour high speed
ferry trip back to Seattle. We only achieved the first two things.

So we wake up horribly early - by which I mean early enough that we have
time to shower before getting a taxi down to Lake Union for 7am - and notice
that there's not much visible outside. We take a taxi down to the Kenmore
Air Service offices at the south end of Lake Union, noticing that they have
a worrying lack of floatplanes at their jetty, and there's more fog than
view.

It doesn't come as too much of a surprise to learn that the 8am flight has
been cancelled because apparently they're not allowed to fly with zero
visibility (we concede they have a point). The guy running the office (whose
job at this point seems to be ringing people up to tell them they're not
going to Victoria) tells us that they're going to try to launch the 8am at
11am, and suggests we come back at 10:15; he also points out a Starbucks a
few minutes walk away.

Okay, it's a Starbucks, but it's warm. We sit talking near the door until
someone vacates the comfy chairs, then relocate. Carol promptly falls
asleep; of course we've not brought any books along because we're supposed
to be sightseeing. Luckily for me, I've remembered to bring my little mp3
player and it's got a couple of BBC radio plays on it, so sip coffee very
slowly while Hercules Poirot investigates an Appointment with Death. The
battery runs out just as the murderer does the decent thing and commits
suicide, and Carol wakes up.

We stroll back to Kenmore and, when the chap has finished with a family who
probably aren't going to be having an island holiday any more, find out that
the flight has been not quite cancelled again; we decide to take a refund.
The Kenmore chap rings the ferry people to tell them we're not going to be
catching the ferry home on account of not being in Victoria, and they fax
through a refund claim form.

We regretfully bid farewell to Kenmore, and walk around the end of Lake
Union, to view the Northwest Seaport which can easily be mistaken for the
Center for Wooden Boats, which is next door and is shut, with it being a
Monday. The Seaport itself does quite a good impression of being shut, too,
going by the closed sign on the wooden hut which may or may not be its gift
shop. They do have a bunch of fliers about their various seacraft in little
hoppers. Some of these refer to boats that, according to their website,
aren't theirs. There's a bunch of wooden things and bits of engine lying
about, and a large schooner called the Wawona. This started as a lumber
carrier, became a mother ship in the Bering Sea fishery, and served as a
military barge in the Second World War taking military supplies to Alaska,
and wood to Washington. Now it's on the land and full of holes. We walk down
to the water, past a row of small wooden sailing boats that you can hire
from the Wooden Boat people on Sundays, and find a row of historic boats
that are still afloat. There's the Arthur Foss, an 1889 tug that's been a
film star and was the last American ship to leave Wake Island; now it's
covered up with canvas so you can walk past it without noticing it's there.
Next to the Arthur Foss is the fireboat Duwamish, apparently the world's
most powerful fireboat from 1909 to 2003, US Lightship #83 Swiftsure, born
in New Jersey, and serving at Blunts Reef CA and San Francisco Bay, as a
gunboat in the war, as a relief lightship, and on the Swiftsure Bank at
entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Finally there's a passenger
ferry/cruise boat called Virginia about which we know nothing. Annoyingly,
all of these boat have signs warning us off even thinking of boarding them.
Walking past them has taken us round two and a half sides of a large
squarish building; coming round the third side we come to a relative hive of
activity: there's a large expanse of bare earth, a coffer dam like affair, a
caterpillar pile driver driving some piles, and another caterpillar crane
thing moving stuff about. We also find the front door of the big building,
which turns out to be a Naval Reserve building and consists mostly of an
immense gymnasium with some offices around a first floor walkway. Not quite
sure if we're actually allowed to we go in, and scurry across the gym to
look at the large scale model of the very ship in which the first settlers
of Seattle got out of when they came to settle Seattle. This was mentioned
on the board outside the Seaport hut, so that's our excuse for being their
if challenged. Nobody seems to care that we're there, though. Maybe they
weren't sure if we'd challenge them...

Back outside we realise that we've exhausted the excitement of not flying to
Victoria, and decide that it'd be a good idea to head back into the centre
of Seattle. For one thing, we've got a days worth of Canadian currency that
we could really do with converting into American. And we've got postcards
that need stamps (okay, we could have bought stamps from the machine in the
hotel gift shop, but that's charging a dollar ten for a 75cent stamp). So we
look at the map and realise that it'd be quite easy to walk to Seattle
Center, as Broad Street is just a block or so away. Soon we're walking along
Broad Street, which suddenly gets more interesting when we find ourselves on
a very narrow sidewalk underneath a road bridge. In this pretty horrid
trench we look up and see signs pointing to where we are as being a
pedestrian way to cross the upper road, and wonder what fresh hell lurks
above. A few minutes later we pop out of the hole, go past a building site
(interestingly - to us, anyway - there's a woman directing traffic, and
there was another woman directing one of the caterpillars near the Naval
Reserve; on UK building sites we've only seen female engineers brandishing
clipboards and giving orders) and arrive at the Seattle Center. We visit the
Music Experience Project gift shop (mainly for the restrooms), buy a couple
of magnetic guitars for Mr M, look up at the Space Needle which is pretty
much invisible due to the mist, and catch the monorail to the Westlake
Center.

We scamper along to the post office on Union and 4th, successfully buy some
stamps at the actual price of the stamps, and find out that there's a bureau
de change in the Westlake Center, more or less where we started from. We
also find out that the post office clerk likes Thomas Kincaid. So we trot
back down 4th, ascent to the top level and find Cooks next to the Thomas
Kincaid shop, and change our loonies, and some real money, for greenbacks.
As we're hungry now we go and explore the food court; I have pizza and Carol
has soup in a loaf of bread,and we sit by a window, watching the monorail go
past.

Then we go shopping. First we find a shop which sells luggage; the clerk is
a little fey, popping up when we're looking at a shoulder bag to wave his
colouring book at us, complain at the intricacy of the drawing, and, when we
admit to being British, telling us he has (or had) a paramour in
Southampton. Soon we have a new bag to carry books home in. We go back down
to the Northwest produce shop on the ground floor to buy a steel salmon and
some chocolate, then go outside to find that it's started raining. So we
take a taxi back to the hotel.

By the time we've got there and dumped all our purchases,it seems to have
stopped raining, so we set out fearlessly to the Klondike Gold Rush Museum
Park. Or Park Museum. Whichever. We've allowed enough time this time, just.
They start off by explaining that the gold rush was really important to
Seattle because everyone going to the Yukon went through Seattle, and
there's some Seattle papers of the time and a replica outfitters stocked
with the sort of stuff people bought in Seattle to take them to the gold
fields. Throughout the museum there are touch-screen computers allowing us
to follow the stories of four (or maybe five) goldrushers, including *the*
Mr Nordstrom, on their way to the gold and back. After examining potential
routes to Alaska, we scamper downstairs to find out about the different
routes over the mountains that were annoyingly between Skagway or Dyea and
the places where the gold allegedly was, then find our way to a small log
cabin with a bit of gold finding equipment next to it. At the end there's a
big wheel to spin, Wheel of Fortune style, with a tiny sliver saying you've
made some money and a large segment indicating a lack of financial success.
Apparently, about 100,000 people set off to the Klondike; 40,000 got there;
20,000 actually prospected or worked claims, and 300 made more than $15,000
in gold. Only 50 of those kept their money for any length of time. Some
people, like Mr Nordstrom, sold their claims, returned to civilisation, or
Seattle, and invested the money. By the time we get to the end of the trail,
they're thinking about shutting the museum, and we just have to quickly
visit the bookshop and ask the real life Park Ranger why his park is
entirely indoors.

We cross to the Zeitgeist for a refreshing coffee, then walk back to the
hotel. After a while we decide we can't be bothered to go out and wander the
streets looking for a restaurant and go down to Maxwell's on the second
floor. Carol starts with onion soup while I eat all the bread, then she's on
pork loin and I have fusilli primaverdi. We finish with ice cream for me and
apple pie a la mode for Carol (this turns out to be with ice cream, not the
whipped cream she was expecting).

Then we wander upstairs, spend a bit of time reading and being bemused by TV
adverts, and then turn in for the night.


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