Pike Place Market

 

We touched down at SEA-TAC on time and slipped through immigration and out of the airport very rapidly. The airport was very quite this morning.

The light rail is an easy option for getting into the Downtown area from the airport which is in the southern corridor of Seattle. We weren't able to check in to our accommodation for a few hours so we stored our luggage at a post office so we could go exploring without being encombered with the bags.

Detached from our bags, we wandered down to the waterfront and had a poke around Pike Place Market.

The markets stretch across multiple levels of buildings and sell everything from arts and crafts, to flowers, fresh produce and food vendors. There is a high emphasis on fresh seafood.

Randomly, there was a Zoltar machine! Movie buffs will recognise it from the 1988 movie, 'Big' which stared Tom Hanks.

There is an alley to one end of the market place that is covered in chewing gum. Locals & tourists have been adding to it for decades. Gum Wall story

It's just plain gross!

We did venture further down the docks to get the lie of the land. Every city seems to have a ferris wheel.

The original freight dock area has been converted to tourist friendly shops and resteraunts. Some are now appartments and hotels. Dotted around the place are various statues like the one above.

 Our wanderings led us to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory icecream shop & lunch bar.

After some deliberation, Harry settled on the Birthday Cake flavoured icecream.

The cone was enormous and it looked like it had half a regular tube of icecream in it. Apparently it was delicious.

Toward the end of the afternoon, we collected our luggage from the post office and made our way to Belltown Court (above), our home for the next few days. It is a mixed residential and holiday apartment complex.

We could see the Space Needle from our apartment balcony.

Having settled in and taken a load off our feet briefly before setting off to find some dinner. Seattle is a hub for artistic people of many forms making every turn a new outdoor art gallery.

The Long Hop

Good morning from somewhere off the coast of British Columbia. We've been in the air for 13+ hours on what has been a long but fairly comfortable flight. The Singapore Airlines A350 experience has been very nice with a surprising amount of leg room, comfortable seats, excellent service, access to internet and a smooth ride. Somehow, we all managed to get plenty of sleep. The day coming out of Singapore was very short because we were flying away from the sun and much of the flight was in the dark. With dawn upon us, we are about to start our decent into Seattle. 

This will mess with your head. We arrive in Seattle about an hour after we left Singapore despite flying for 15 hours! We crossed the international dateline during the flight which messes up the clock. In reality, it has been about 20 hours since we left Perth. The adventure starts when we touch down at SEA-TAC.

This epic holiday across the northern part of the US will take us to Seattle, Yellowstone, Chicago, Washington and New York. I'm sure there will be some wonderful stories to tell as this adventure unfolds.

Now we need to try to stay awake until as late as posible this evening to try to beat jet-lag.

Flight to Seattle

 

Well, we made it to Singapore, but not without incident. I won't go into it, but more often than not, red-eye flights are problematic for us. The late night; irregular meal times and lack of sleep are a cocktail of trouble. Singapore Airlines have well kitted out aircraft and fantastic service, but we are still pretty wrecked this morning. Fortunately, we have the next 15 hour flight to Seattle to catch up. This will be out first Airbus A350 experience and, Harry in particular, is very excited.

Flight to the US via Singapore

 

We are off on a grand adventure to the USA! Our Singapore Airlines Boeng 787 flight leaves shortly for Singapore and we will arrive there early tomorrow morning.