My first experience in the good old US of A was this past weekend and boy was it a strange one. Gord, Bjorn and I traveled down to Seattle on Friday, for Sarah's birthday party on the Saturday, which was set to be big fun. The drive itself was cool, I love road trips and the idea of being in a car, warm, dry and able to spread out as much as I like, was neat. At customs we were strapped to lie detectors and were given rectal examinations*, which left me wondering whether I wanted to come back to the states again. The drive to Seattle took approximately 4 and a half hours (I think?), although there were a few hold-ups, with the usual Canadians having crashed or dismembered their vehicles (it was abit wet and we all know how great they drive in the rain lol).
We got to Sarah's late that night. She has an awesome and huge apartment (though it doesn't look it on the outside). It made me wonder why she's always coming to stay at our crummy retro apartment. Well, I guess there is Gord, but that can't be it right? lol. Maybe she just likes the tots better in Canada?
On Saturday Bjorn and I were kindly dropped off at the Space Needle, where we hit the Sci-Fi Museum. We had heard a lot of cool things about this place, and upon entry, discovered it was all true. There were lots of cool things to see like ET (whom Bjorn wanted to hug. Freak?) and even a ninja turle on display. They have the Queen Alien from Alien and the lots of other neat machines on display (including the machine from T2). It was a pretty small museum so my attention span did stay the course, although Bjorn complained that he could've spent longer there, had it not been for my antsy-pantsy-ness.
After that, we decided to venture downtown and due to the excessive amounts of rain (read: rivers for roads) we caught the bus. Not really knowing where to go (I stupidly left the map in the car. D'oh!) we took a guess at where downtown was (it was gray, dark and bucketing down) and found ourselves quite close to Pike Place Market, one of the local attractions of Seattle, where they fling fish at each other and have really delicious tasting corndogs (NZ read: hot dogs) It being a Saturday, it was quite busy, so we decided to head back to the Space Needle (where Gord was going to be picking us up from) after about half an hour of it.
So off we went, venturing out into the rain. This time, we didn't take the bus, having a fairly good idea where the Space Needle was from here (duh, you can see it) We got rained out and wet. My shoes got saturated and my jeans were soaked up to about my knees. But it was fine and after a short watery trek and abit of wandering aroudn, Gord came to our rescue and took us back to the dry sanctuary of Sarah's apt.
The party itself was pretty fun. There was heaps of delicious food and Sarah's friends are all very nice. The next day came and went. We were suppose to leave on the Sunday, but I was coerced into calling in sick on Monday morning so we could stay an extra day, which proved to be an excellent plan as there was still heaps to do, see and eat in Seattle. So was Seattle fun? Sure. I don't really have much to say about it. It was fun because we spent out time with cool people, but the city itself was abit boring, steep and wet. I'm sure it would've been much nicer in better weather, but we lucked out and got the shit of it all. I would definitely go back to Seattle, because it was fun. American's do things differently and there's heaps of different food items I have yet to try. I didn't have trouble being understood once whilst in America, which was surprisingly, since my accent has been completely misunderstood on several occasions in Vancouver. So who knows, maybe Americans aren't that bad afterall? :) They sure made me feel welcome while I was there :)
*read: photos taken and laser finger printing!