This is my first time in the USA's Pacific Northwest. It was a gloriously scenic flight north: mountains and valleys, forests and deserts, with hardly any clouds save for the huge ochre-coloured smoke stacks rising from the wildfires in northern California.
The climate in Seattle is warmer than I was expecting. It's a very affluent and bohemian city - there are hardly any fatties - and, as with Colorado, hash is legal here now. Also it's a thriving hub for what I believe is nowadays called the LBGTQ community. Some of the trannies seem to take a rather pick-and-mix attitude to the different visual aspects of femininity. I'd better not try to explain that one in detail.
Seattle cuisine is overwhelmingly fish-based, which is not to my tastes, but I'm mostly being cost-conscious and cooking my own meals in the hostel. Indeed, on Friday, not only did I have hot dogs & baked beans for lunch, but I got all the ingredients (including ketchup) from the 'free food' basket left by previous hostel guests. It's not really possible to stoop much lower than that, short of drinking water straight from the toilet bowl.
With mountains and oceans and greenery all around, Seattle has probably the most attractive visual setting of any American city I've visited. All in all, it's gone straight into my top five and I recommend it to everyone. Hopefully my next destination will be equally pleasing. In the meantime I’m feeling slightly jetlagged, and I’m in Seattle...I wonder if there are any lame film-based puns I can make out of that?
 |
| The Space Needle and downtown Seattle. Seen from Kerry Park, in the 'burbs about a mile north of town. |
 |
| Piers on Seattle's western shore. |
 |
| This is the very first Starbucks. Like, off of ever. It joins Roswell and the 'Neighbours' set on the list of places that I've visited without knowing why. Ideally I wanted a picture without any selfie-taking Asians in it... ...historians estimate that this was last possible some time in the late 1990s. |
 |
| Slightly non-PC archive newspaper (see sub-headline on right) in the Museum of Flight. Seattle has a huge Asian population and I'm surprised this is still on show. But then, they started it. |
 |
| Also at the Museum of Flight - an original Supermarine Spitfire. The World War II room contained fighter planes from all the major combatants: this one is obviously the prettiest, not that I'm biased. |
 |
| Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest air-breathing jet aircraft that ever was or ever will be. At top speed it did 37 miles per minute. And it looks superbly evil. |
