USA - Sleepless in Sunny Seattle

July 1-3

Hello everyone!

An almost five hour flight - one of the longest routes you can take in the continental United States of America - took me away from the deep south and slingshotted me up to quite a different climate. With a 3 hour time difference, it also resulted in minor jet lag, with me waking up at my friend Kelly’s house at 4am on the first two mornings. Well, I’m telling myself it’s “jet lag”.

Kayaking in Lake Union, a waterway in central Seattle

Mount Rainier - not always visible - sits southeast of the city

Seattle is the largest city in an area known as the Pacific Northwest, where I’ll be for the next week or so. As well as that snowy mountain in the distance, it also has large offices and bases for some massive companies, like Google and Amazon. Big tech, meaning some quite big prices.

The distance is 3,500 km - Paris to Moscow is a similar distance! 

Amazon was formed in 1994 in Bellevue, across a lake from Seattle

Spending six weeks travelling across the USA means making choices, rather than doing everything possible. One example of this is the fact that Seattle’s main architectural icon, the Space Needle, wasn’t entered. Spending $49 to go up a building that looks better on the outside isn’t a good choice.

It was built for the 1962 World's Fair

At 184 metres, it used to be the tallest structure
west of the Mississippi River. Now it's not in
the top five tallest in its own city.

Another choice I made is connected with a rather famous coffee chain which was first born in Seattle. The first Starbucks was opened here in 1971. There is a branch near the popular Pike Place Market downtown, which had a line so long that it stretched onto the road. I didn’t need one from here: partly because I didn’t want to spend ages standing on my still dodgy ankle, and partly because…well, there’s better coffee round the corner.

The company is now present in over 80 countries

The reflection in the window may give you an idea of the line

The market itself, situated near the water, is quite famous for its fish market. Specifically, one fish market, where the workers launch the fish across the path and catch it in paper in the main section of the shop. Loads of people were recording each throw - I’m glad they caught every one I saw.

The immature side of my found the fact that
shrimp were categorised by 'ass size' quite funny

Seattle’s culture is often seen as quite alternative, noticed more globally through the rise of Nirvana and maintained with its recent liberal policies. The marijuana you can smell - and the use of fentanyl that you see on the street - is evidence of this. Alternative culture can be seen in the shops around Pike Place Market and its Gum Wall, which is…a wall with loads of chewing gum on it. I didn’t feel the need to add to it.

Comic and movie culture seems big here - this was outside a large
comic store in Pike Place Market called Golden Age Collectables

In Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, this display shows shrunken heads

The Wall was started in the 1990s, completely cleaned
in 2015...and immediately restarted in the same place

Alternative can stretch beyond human, as well. One of the city’s stranger and most beloved things is a one-eyed troll in the suburb of Fremont. It was made more famous from being featured in the movie 10 Things I Hate About You. That’s not an internet search - I watched it. Here. It’s actually one of quite a few trolls around the city and region.

The troll is holding a real VW Beetle,
which had a California licence plate

This troll is on Bainbridge Island, a
short ferry from downtown Seattle

The nickname given to Seattle gives a clue as to where its charm lies. The Emerald City is surrounded by nature (it even has some within it!). Snowy mountain ranges to the east and west, evergreens in all directions you can see. What you'll also notice is that my three days in Seattle were filled with almost uninterrupted sunshine. That isn't normal: the city is known as one of the wetter main hubs in the USA. I got very lucky!

This sole sequoia is 80 feet tall, and was
moved to this busy intersection in 1973

The Olympic mountain range help to
separate Seattle from the Pacific Ocean

What I didn’t know before arriving was that Seattle is a coastal city. Well, almost. The city sits on the Puget Sound, a waterway that soon feeds into the Pacific Ocean, with only a couple of little islands and a relatively small national park sitting on a land mass in between. The sound itself is very calm, allowing the chance to kayak around - an unbeatable experience in this glorious weather. I imagine it's less fun when the wind and rain pick up...

There are quite a few hazards on the sound: seaplanes,
speedboats, muppets who take pictures from kayaks...

Celebrating not falling into the pretty chilly water

Another way of seeing the natural delights of the Emerald City is by using a seaplane. Again, a choice to be made. The choice we made was to see far more planes at the Museum of Flight.

This belonged to Michael Anderson, a crew
member on the Columbia, the space shuttle that
disintegrated upon reentry to Earth in 2003

The museum is in Seattle because it is the home of another quite large company. Boeing’s first production facility was set up near here in 1916. As well as charting the history of Boeing (we had a tight schedule so didn’t see much of that), the Museum of Flight has many planes that have been used for a variety of reasons over the past hundred years.

One of the first planes - Ryanair would probably
go back to this if it was cheaper

This MiG plane hasn't flown since
being decorated with millions of beads 

A couple of notable aircraft stand out in the covered outdoor space. One of the 20 Concordes built is one of them. I didn’t realise how few people could actually be flown at one time, which you note when boarding the aircraft.

The plane once flew from New York to
London in 2 hours and 52 minutes

The final Concorde flight was in 2003

Another is the Air Force One used by Presidents Eisenhower and in the early years of President Kennedy’s tenure. It later became Air Force Two, which is notable as it is the very plane that Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson took to Dallas in the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination. He flew back on Air Force One as President.

This was the first presidential jet plane

This plane also flew Nixon to China in 1972

There are also many, many military aircraft, ranging from those used in World War 2 up to 21st century operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s quite unnerving to think about how much damage these machines have caused around the world.

This Chinook helicopter flew from 1963 to 2019

This plane was used in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq in 1991

This is a B-29: the plane that dropped atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The
actual planes are in museums in Virginia and Ohio.

We had inadvertently entered the museum backwards, so had started at the ‘final’ section: space travel. That was a very interesting section, including a real Soyuz capsule and a replica of the space shuttle.

This could carry up to three astronauts

The space shuttle took about 8 and a half minutes
to go from ground to low earth orbit. The distance is
equivalent to going from Seattle to Portland.
The train to do that takes 4 hours...

Aside from briefly losing my phone through some slats in a wooden patio, I have had a calm and cheerful time in Seattle, particularly in its charming suburbs and islands. The weather certainly helped show its sunny side!

A wide variety of tools were used to rescue my
phone - it was like playing Operation all over again

Seattle's skyline - the Space Needle is on the far left

The one time I saw an orca - it is the season to see them in this area

Muchas gracias to Kelly for being a great host and tour guide!

Love you all,

Matt

USA - Always Coca-Cola

June 26

Hello everyone!

Georgia’s capital and largest city is Atlanta: home to over 6 million people in its metropolitan area and a few quite contrasting elements.

Little wonder Coca-Cola haven't contacted me for their next marketing campaing...

Footsteps of Rosa Parks: the civil rights movement has a deep history here

Atlanta is not a place that Hannah ever wants to visit. However, my keenness to visit the place known as A-T-L to locals (not Hot-lanta as I want to call it in these temperatures) at some point eventually led to us driving an hour south to downtown.

Traffic heading to Atlanta - it backed up when six lanes turned into five...

The pleasant and empty Centennial Olympic Park

Atlanta's metro area is the sixth-largest in the
USA, and by far the biggest I'll visit all summer

The common question is why you would actually visit it. It’s a city built for cars, even with a heavily-used metro system. It’s also not known as a must-see place to visit like New York, for example. 

Many big buildings include 'Peachtree' in their
name, as Georgia is known as the Peach State 

What Atlanta does have is the home base of probably the most iconic and famous drink brand in history.

One of many, many posters

An iconic bottle

Coca-Cola is synonymous with Atlanta, and it’s celebrated in the World of Coca-Cola, which can be found downtown. It’s quite a chaotic place that tries to mix telling the history of the drink whilst hosting interactive sections to showcase different senses.

John Pemberton 'created' the mixture in 1886, selling it soon after for $2300

A 1980s advert in Egypt for the drink

Coca-Cola was created by a man called John S. Pemberton in May 1886. It was originally sold from a pharmacy as a sort of medicine. The recipe was kept secret and the drink has flourished to become ubiquitous around the world.

Limited editions have been commonly used by Coca-Cola -
these showcase local businesses like Delta Airlines

Coca-Cola created the 'ring-pull' can in 1964 - before
that, you needed a can opener to drink them!

We started by walking through ‘The Vault’. Whether the secret recipe is actually in there is questionable, but it charted the first eras of Coca-Cola, including some interesting claims that it had been invented elsewhere before Pemberton’s magic formula in 1886.

Apart from a brief stint in a vault in New York City, the 'recipe' has
been stored here. In the city, probably not this shiny attempt of a museum.

Scotland? India? We will never know...

Candler bought the rights and established
the company we know as Coca-Cola

There are also sections highlighting the company’s impact on American and western culture, as well as evidence that sports science and nutrition was very different at the start of the twentieth century.

The company claim that they made Santa
look this way in 1931: cheerful, plump and red

In 1969, Coca-Cola redesigned and focused on adding key
elements, like a fixed colour scheme and white ribbon

"When I first went into a six-day race I took
a jug of Coca-Cola..." Sportspeople, take note!

The most interesting section of Coca-Cola World was its newest, using AI photography to generate pictures of what you could have looked like if you had a certain profession when entering one of the first soda fountain bars that sold the drink. There was also a place where they would take your photo and create an AI-generated image of what you would like in a classic Coca-Cola advert. My photo looked hilarious.

Me as a journalist from the 1900s - possibly an improvement

Some people looked more authentic...

...than others!

There are also sections explaining the chemistry behind soft drinks and the different smells associated with Coca-Cola products. The latter included a game where you sniff a pad and then guess the spice, fruit or herb. I was terrible at it.

Beverages under the Coca-Cola umbrella include Fanta and Sprite

Apparently it was lime. I had no idea.

The reason a child would get excited about coming here (aside from having your photo taken with a weird, skinny, tall polar bear) is the tasting room, in which you can sample over 100 different drinks made by the Coca-Cola company around the world. Some, such as Bonbon Anglais, were delightful, tasting a bit like Lilt. Others, such as sour plum Fanta from China, were…undrinkable. There are so many free samples you can have before your teeth start feeling like mush.

School trips here would be insane

Don't. Do. It.

The ‘museum’ is situated a block away from Centennial Olympic Park, a pleasant green space that seemed sparsely populated (possibly due to the weather). This park contains memorials for the 1996 Olympic Games hosted by the city. 

The Olympic Stadium was redesigned as a baseball
stadium after 1996, and is now used for college football

The star of the 1996 Games was Michael Johnson

Part of this includes the memorial for the bombing that happened in the park during the Olympics, as well as a tribute to the man who found the suspicious package and alerted authorities: a move that undoubtedly saved many lives. It’s not mentioned that he was pursued by the FBI and the media and presumed guilty for quite a while…

Sources indicate that one person died, but this memorial suggests two

Richard Jewell was intensely investigated before being exonerated

Other famous people are memorialised in the city; specifically, the most famous man associated with civil rights in the country and arguably the world. Martin Luther King Jr was born in Atlanta in 1929. His first house and the church in which he preached can be found a short distance to the east of downtown, in a broader area known as the Martin Luther King Jr National Historical Park.

A copy of the memorial found in Washington DC

King lived here for 12 years

The Church is famous; however, the guard was
adamant I couldn't come in at my visiting time

Dr King is buried here, with an artificial stream running around the tomb. This is a visual representation of a quote from his renowned ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. It’s an important site and one that I’m surprised doesn’t garner more attention, though like most people I would have visited the National Center for Civil and Human Rights if it had been open. 

"We will not be satisfied until justic rolls down
like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Auburn Avenue was an important area for
black Americans in Atlanta during segregation

The main museum, next to World of Coca-Cola, was not open

Another rights pioneer of sorts was a lady called Mary McKenzie. In 1945 she opened a tea room called Mary Mac’s. At this time, women weren’t allowed to own restaurants; it was therefore called a ‘tea room’. It has since become one of the most famous establishments in Atlanta, with a star-studded guest list strewn across one of the walls. The food is very ‘southern US’: meatloaf, grits, fried chicken and more, all washed down with sweet tea. No Coca-Cola in sight, here.

It's also one of the city's largest restaurants

Richard Gere and James Brown have dined here

We didn't need dinner

Atlanta may not have iconic sights or many visitors from afar. What it does have are memorials for important events and people, all washed down with a cup of ‘Ice Cold Sunshine’. 

A ha indeed: a sign in the chaotic World of COca-Cola 

Love you all,

Matt