The Travelling Teacher: 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!