Sleeping in Seattle

Greetings, holidaying reader, as I write this to you not from the sunny climes of California, but from the more autumnal weather of the Pacific Northwest. Yes, this week we've been up here in Seattle, enjoying weather which is rather more like October in the UK. It's made a change and actually been quite pleasant to get the raincoats out and feel chilly in the wind.

We travelled up here on Amtrak's Coast Starlight, an overnight train which runs from LA to Seattle in about 34 hours. We boarded at San Jose, about 20 miles from Palo Alto, and from there it's almost exactly 24 hours to Seattle. As is traditional, here's a picture of the train:

We'd booked a sleeper cabin, which is nice and private. The train left San Jose in the dark, and as the sun rose on Sunday, we were still in California! Yes, it's a big state, but also the train's pretty slow, averaging about 40mph.

Eventually we crossed into Oregon, stopping at the town of Klamath Falls. At this point you're up in the mountains - Klamath Falls is at about 4000ft elevation - and the morning was spent gently descending down the edge of the Cascades mountain range to Eugene. Then it's on to Portland, shortly after which you cross into Washington state. It's then about another 4 hours to Seattle's King Street station:

Seattle's a very varied city, with a more European feel than California. On our first day here, we visited the Fremont district, home of the famous troll, and also this fella:

Seattle is of course a port city, nestled on the beautiful Puget Sound, and we spent some time walking along the coastline. The walking tour we took leads to the Olympic Sculpture Park, which they've created out of a bridge over a railway line (and yes, a freight train went past with 81 wagons). It then moves on to the famous Space Needle:

The needle was built as the centrepiece of the 1962 World's Fair, and is now part of a park with a number of major tourist attractions, but more of that later.

On Tuesday we wandered down to the famous Pike Place market, which has some pretty awesome seafood on offer:

Nearby is the first ever Starbucks, but personally I prefer to drink coffee, so we didn't visit.

Pike Place is a weird combination of unvarnished produce market and tourist tat trap. It was strange to walk around it when it was basically deserted as a result of the pandemic. We came back later in the week, when it was busier, and enjoyed a crumpet from the Crumpet Shop... which was actually surprisingly good.

Tuesday afternoon saw us getting on the monorail (also built for the World's Fair) back to the foot of the Space Needle, to visit Chihuly Gardens and Glass. This is a large-scale display of the work of local artist Dale Chihuly. His works almost defy description, but let's give it a go: it's a set of sculptures and installations built from large pieces of blown glass, looking something like a triffid or a creation of Dr Seuss. We also managed to see a glassblowing demo which gave you some impression of the technical accomplishment involved in the things we'd just seen:

Tuesday evening saw us taking on the local variant of fish and chips:

This was quite reasonable, but for future reference, Americans: the fish should be battered, not breadcrumbed, and the chips should be chunky and soft; these are French fries.

We spent Wednesday and Thursday outside the city, having rented a car. We took a long, long drive on Wednesday to get down to Mount St Helens, which famously erupted cataclysmically back in 1980. It was a couple of hours down I-5, then an hour up State Route 504, also known as the Spirit Lake Highway. This road goes up and up - we passed a 1000ft elevation sign, then 2000ft, then 3000ft, and finally 4000ft, shortly afterwards arriving at the Johnston Ridge Observatory. This is on a ridge about 6 miles away from the summit of Mount St Helens, and is named after a geologist killed when the volcano erupted in 1980. The views from there are simply spectacular:

Here, the mountain's summit is behind the clouds, but what you see in front of that is the beginnings of the area which was completely changed by the eruption. Before 1980, this was a forest. Now it's covered in deep pumice dust, and you can see some channels where streams and creeks have carved into the pumice. To the left there are hummocks which are literally bits of the mountain blown out by the force of the eruption.

The eruption was huge, completely reshaping the area, and blowing something like 1400ft of height off the top of the mountain. We could both safely say we'd never seen anything like it and it was worth the long drive.

Thursday saw us visiting Snoqualmie Falls, a 250ft waterfall which is home to a fairly large (but well hidden) hydroelectric project:

Friday saw us touring the architecture and lakes of the city:

Washington is very different to California, and Seattle's pretty different to San Francisco. Generally it's cleaner here and things feel a little more... well... sane. It's an area of incredible natural beauty but is also proud of its industrial heritage. Helen's a bit worried about the probability of Mount Rainier blowing up and what might happen up here if that happens, though, so we won't be moving just yet. [However, in another weird aside, there is no state income tax in Washington, unlike California, so we'd be better off if we did]

Tomorrow we'll be back on the train to San Jose, arriving back in Palo Alto late on Sunday morning. Wish us luck!