Seattle

On the last weekend in June, we travelled down to Seattle to meet up with our friends Holly and Pat, whose wedding we went to in Florida last year. They were travelling to a family reunion in Oregon. That weekend was a real scorcher - up to 35 degrees C in Seattle. We hired a car and drove down at what we thought was a pretty early time, but we had awful queues at the border. It took 3 hours 15 minutes to travel the final 800m to the border crossing - aaaaarrrrgh! So we arrived mid-afternoon in Seattle which was much later than expected, but actually tied in pretty well with Holly and Pat's schedule as it turned out. We did some walking around Downtown that afternoon and along the promenade, but it was baking hot and we had to keep hiding in the shade :)

The next day we had brunch and then Holly and Pat left to start their journey to Oregon. It was a brief rendezvous, but great to see them nonetheless. After our border ordeal on Saturday I decided that we should wait until late at night to attempt the crossing back to Canada, so we thought we'd spend the whole day in Seattle and make the most of it. We did loads of walking all around the Downtown area and got a flavour of most of the different districts. We found a great little place for lunch in Pike's Place Market too, called the Soundview Cafe - recommended. In the afternoon we had to escape the heat so we spent a couple of hours in the Aquarium which was pretty cool - bigger and better than the one in Vancouver. We topped off the day with a tasty meal at Anthony's on Pier 66, and then set off for home. This time we reached the border at about 10.45pm and waited only 10 minutes - bliss!

We certainly enjoyed the trip, and we liked Seattle too (thought perhaps the lovely weather helped). There seemed to be lots to see and do there. Perhaps we will go back again sometime. You can find the photos we took on Flickr.