Seattle came and went in the blink of an eye; four days does seems to go by a lot quicker these days.

At first it looked like I wasn’t going to get here at all.   Icelandair declared my assurance that I was going to cross into Mexico ‘sometime around the middle of September’ not good enough, and I was taken down into the bowels of the airport to book an onward/return flight before they would let me on the plane.

So now I’m on a deadline, which ruins the whole free-spirited ‘It’ll take as long as it takes’ notion that I had (which was only an illusion really anyway because money, as always, is a big constraint and I was always going to be limited to the three month time limit on the visa waiver programme). Whatever; no big deal.

Anyway, Seattle then.

My starting point was a blog post I saved a few months ago from a blog called Savored Journeys, entitled 30 Fun things to do in Seattle. Well I’m going to Seattle and I like fun, I thought, so this should be right up my alley.

Possibly 30 things for a 4-day trip is over-stretching me a little, but I ‘m willing to give it a go

I’m not going to write a what to do in Seattle type post based on a 4-day trip; there are people who have been here a lot longer who can do that far better than me. But here’s a few of my impressions.

Pike Place Market

Like most trips to Seattle, I started in the famous Pike Place Market.  The market area is home to the original Starbucks (which isn’t even actually the original and has become somewhat of a tourist trap. I didn’t go; there are better coffee shops, or bigger Starbucks even if that’s your thing).

Pike Place Market is also home to the famous chewing gum wall….

Wall of chewing gum. Disgusting but somehow compelling

I took the ferry over to Bainbridge island.  Bainbridge was so-so, but the ferry ride was fab and worth it for that alone.

Taking the ferry over to Bainbridge Island. Yes that is snow in August

I took a trip to Ballard via the Hiram S. Chittenden Locks.

Locks

They have the fish ladders, where you can go down and see the salmon.

Down the fish ladders to see the salmon.  Damn things swum too fast for my camera.

There is no shortage of parks and green spaces in Seattle:

Green Lake, great little swimming area (didn’t look clean enough for Ms Fussy here so I didn’t swim) and also running/biking tracks. I walked.

This is called Gasworks park; I’ll leave you to figure out why.I do love looking at old gasworks and I don’t know why.

Not forgetting my favourite part: Fremont, which was so good it merits a separate post all of its own (here)

Fremont

All in all, I found it a very liveable city, which I knew it would be really.  The people were friendly and generally very liberal-minded.  ‘I could live here’, I said to myself, on more than one occasion.