Day 104, 105 & 106 - Port Townsend & Seattle, WA

We woke up, ate our bacon sandwiches cooked the night before (we've become lazy and no longer cook in the morning as it's a faff putting the grill together and then cleaning and putting it away) and hit the road.

Our first stop was Port Townsend. This town is located in the very north east corner of Washington State. It is a pretty port town with Victorian builds lining the highstreet, a port and a ferry terminal with ships taking passengers over to Canada. 

We enjoyed walking along the high street, checking out the quirky shops, one of which sold pirate clothes and where I bought my 'pirate cats riding a dolphin' top.

We stopped off for a hot chocolate and a beer in a local bakery before heading back on the road towards Bainbridge Island where we were going to take the ferry over to Seattle. Our original plan was to drive around rather than take the ferry but this was going to take an extra 2 hours at least depending on the traffic and the only reason we hadn't considered the ferry before was because our road trip planning tool (Furkot) only routes down roads, not across water.

The ferry cost $18.70 and the journey took 35 minutes but it was worth the money and seemed too quick as there was so much to do on the ferry and the view of the Seattle skyline was spectacular. If you are visiting Seattle, it would be worth doing the ferry as a foot passenger (which is a lot cheaper than what we paid for a car) just to get the awesome view and to check out Bainbridge Island.

Once the ferry had docked and we disembarked, we drove the short distance to our B&B for the next three nights, the Gaslight Inn.

This B&B was awarded a Landmark Status due to its history and significance in the local community. Inside felt like a private members smoking club with the deep dark colours and wood paneling but it was tastefully broken up with antique and modern art. The owner of the B&B was a lovely man who gave us lots of tips on where to go and what to see in Seattle.

The only negative with the B&B was the parking. On the first day, we were lucky to find a space a short walk away but after returning from the Future of Flight on the final day, we drove around for nearly an hour trying to find somewhere to park. We heard from the owner that Seattle is moving towards being car free and new houses don't need to provide parking spaces. This is putting huge pressure on the urban areas where parking spaces are already short. Next time we visit, hopefully we won't have a car and then we won't need to worry about parking again.

Most evenings we walked 10 minutes out of the B&B to Capitol Hill. This area is buzzing all day and all night, there are loads of different bars and restaurants and all of them seem to be quirky in one way or another. As with a lot of cities we have visited, this up and coming area is located in what used to be an industrial area, I think specifically where a lot of car garages and showrooms were located.

The first night, we visited what we thought was a brewery bar only to find out it was a ginger beer bar called RGB (Rachels Ginger Beer). I love ginger beer but Lee is not a big fan, even so he manned up and had one of the many flavours. Next we found an actual brewery called Optimism Brewery which was located in an old car showroom. The beers were good but what we really liked about this place was the ethos towards the staff and the customers. For example, their prices included everything, no extra taxes added on at the end and they didn't believe in tipping and instead paid their staff more and gave them fair benefits. Lee is going to over more on this in one of his special posts.

Finally, we had dinner in a late night 24 hour diner called Lost Lake. For some reason, the usual food photos we seem to take were missing, I'm blaming the ginger beer and Lee is blaming actual beer.

For our first full day in Seattle, we wanted to do the usual touristy things around town. First was The Starbucks Reserve. The unofficial story (this could be completely incorrect so don't quote me on it but it feels too close to the truth not to share) is that Starbucks was founded in Seattle and has its corporate head offices here. Many of the board members, including the CEO all live in the suburbs around Capitol Hill and enjoy a coffee on their way into the office each morning but they're not keen on the mass produced coffee you find in regular Starbucks so they created the Starbucks Reserve store. Apparently they regularly visit the store to pick up their favourite coffee so if you know what they look like (which we didn't) you might be able to spot them.

The coffee is made in house right from the raw beans and you can see into the factory where they are roasted and then watch the beans travel along the tubes to the barista. We tried two different flights of coffee. The first was two 8fl oz cups of the same coffee, one prepared on the Clover Brewer (a vacuum filtration system) and the other as a pour-over (i.e. how your normal coffee is brewed). We were both surprised to find the coffees tasted different. The Clover one was much smoother with a less bitter taste in comparison. Maybe we really are coffee snobs at heart!

Our second flight was three different 8fl oz coffees, all prepared in the Clove Brewer. It was interesting to taste how different the coffees were and did make us appreciate the art that must go into roasting a little more.

In a caffeine coma, we then continued walking down Capitol Hill until we reached Pike Place Market. The market overlooks the Elliott Bay waterfront and is the oldest continuously operated public farmers market in the United States. It is known for the people throwing fish although we didn't get to see this as it was just so busy. We walked down the market looking at meat, fish, vegetables, flowers, arts and crafts, pasta, nut, and so much more. It is a huge market and not just a tourist attractions, locals were there too buying their groceries and flowers.

After a quick lunch, we then headed on the Monorail to the Seattle Center located on the other side of downtown area. The Seattle Center is where most of the big tourist attractions are located including the Space Needle, Science Center and International Fountain. It was a Sunday and there was a Brazilian Festival and a Tattoo Convention on so the place was heaving with people. We walked around, decided that queuing for 2 hours to go up into the Space Needle was too long and that we would come back tomorrow instead.

We walked from the Seattle Center down towards the front of the bay and then along the bay. Along the way, we went past Hempfest, an annual festival celebrating the decriminalization of marijuana. Washington became the first US state to legalize recreational use of marijuana so we were surprised this festival was still needed, maybe it's just a good excuse for people to get stoned.

For dinner, we went to a place I'd seen previously on Man versus Food called The Crab Pot. The episode is here. We had an awesome dinner, which was poured out of a huge bucket onto the table in front of us. What we ordered included a huge amount of sea food and it was a real challenge to get through it all but in the end, we were beaten but only by 2 corn on the cobs!

Lee hadn't had his hair cut since we left the UK and it started to get to the Keith Lemon length, it needed a cut!! So after a big dinner and a few beers, I managed to persuade Lee to go to a barbers. He chose a place called Ruby's on Capitol Hill which was recommended by the B&B owner. It was a really funky alternative place. I'm actually surprised he was OK going here as it looked from the outside as if he'd come out with multicoloured unicorn sparkle hair rather than a short back and sides! The lady who cut his hair did an awesome job, he says it's his best haircut ever. I just hope he can get the same thing back at home as there is no way I'm going to get the same look for him with the clippers.

After a haircut, we had a drink to celebrate in a game-themed bar. As long as you buy a drink (alcoholic or non-alcoholic), you can use one of their many board games. a great place for the university students to hang out but we weren't there for Monopoly: we went there for the pinball, my favourite!

For our final day in Seattle, we visited the The Future of Flight Boeing Tour. It was a 30 minute drive from the B&B and cost $25 per person. We booked online the day before and are really glad we did so as it was fully booked when we arrived the next day. After a short film about the greatness of the Boeing company, we were taken on a bus to the largest building in the World by volume and where they build and assemble the 747, 767, 777, and 787 Dreamliners. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take anything into the tour, all our personal items (other than clothes) were put into a locker so we don't have any photos or videos but it was an awesome experience. The tour took 90 minutes and we got to see how the 747s are built from scratch, from the sheets of metal being put together and shaped into fuselage and wings to the electrics being fitted and finally then end product sitting on the tarmac waiting to be tested and delivered. We also saw the Dreamliners which unlike the 747s, are assembled rather than built with parts being delivered in fat sausage-like planes called Dreamlifters to the factory. After the tour, we walked around the display area where we were allowed to take photos, walked through a replicate of one of the ISS modules, pretended to fly a plane and took part in a customer feedback survey on a new design for inside a cabin. We had a huge amount of fun and would really recommend this to anyone going to Seattle.

In the afternoon, we took Fin for a bath as he was getting embarrassingly dirty and we did some more laundry before heading back to downtown Seattle. We had planned to do the Space Needle after the crowds from yesterday but a lot of smoke from fires in both Canada and Washington had moved over Seattle making visibility really poor. On a good day, you should be able to see the Olympic Mountains and Canada from the top of the Space Needle, we could barely see a couple of yards in front of us so we decided we would save it for when we next visit Seattle.

In the evening, we stumbled across A Pizza Mart that had just soft opened and was planning its grand opening in a couple of weeks time. We initially only planned to have a drink here as it looked funky inside with cool artwork all over the walls but the smell of pizza overcame us and we ended up ordering. The food was really good and we hope this place continues to be really successful.

Heading back to the B&B we went past a game of polo on bikes rather than horses (kind of makes sense if you want to play polo in the middle of a city). We'd never seen this before and we ended up watching for a few games. We were impressed with out skillful the riders were to be able to stand still on their bikes, change direction quickly and not fall off when they bumped into each other.

The final picture of the video is the last picture we took in Seattle. It is of a Poster Tree: the name we gave to the telegraph poles throughout Capitol Hill that have so many posters on them, they look like they have podgy bellies sticking out.

NB: for those who don't know who Keith Lemon is, watch this