Seattle

Virgin has in the last few months started a domestic airline in the USA, called (predictably enough) Virgin America. They look pretty cool online and are cheap enough, so I decided to give them a go. American authorities recommend getting to the airport 2 hours prior to scheduled departure, so I got to San Francisco Airport exactly 2 hours prior, only to be disappointed to find that my Virgin America flight to Seattle was a few hours delayed due to one of their planes being buggered (not their exact words). In the end it meant I spent over 5 hours in an especially boring airport terminal. One that only had one pizza restaurant and one cafe. The pizza made for a good late breakfast, though. And on the bright side, Virgin America bribed us not to hate them by supplying free alcohol. Their in flight entertainment was also awesome, I was won over. Mainly by the free alcohol.

Upon arriving in Seattle I was pleased to find that the way downtown was by bus, which only cost $1.50 and was due to depart in a few minutes. It was a long few minutes though, as I came to the realisation of how bloody cold Seattle is. There was no snow, but to me it felt like it should have started coming down any moment. Instead, rain started coming down while I was on the bus, and I managed to get drenched upon disembarking, mainly due to the fact I got lost looking for my hostel. I eventually found it at about 9:30pm, but was freezing and dripping wet when I did so. I recovered by having a quiet one.

Today was my only full day in Seattle so I packed a lot in. Got up early and started with a tour to the Boeing plane assembly plant just out of the city. This plant is in the largest building in the world (by volume). The place is huge. When standing inside, “Jumbo” jets look small. The building is so big in fact, that when they first started using it, it created it's own weather. Clouds would form inside it, and sometimes it would rain! They fixed it by installing giant blower fans.

I am a bit of an airline industry geek, so I was interested to see the first ever Boeing 787 Dreamliner (a revolutionary new airliner) in production, and almost finished.

I got the tour driver to drop me off at Seattle most recognisable landmark, the Space Needle. I went up and checked out the views, and then caught the monorail downtown.

I spent the rest of the day exploring the downtown area and doing some shopping. Seattle is the place where the first Starbucks coffee opened. I went to try to have a coffee there, but the line was almost out the door, and I didn't think it was worth the wait. They really love their Starbucks here though! Without exaggeration, there really seems to be one on every block here! There were several points in the city where I noticed there were 2 different Starbucks in direct view. It is quite ridiculous, really.

Last night as I walked around in the rain I came to the unfortunate realisation that my old shoes were no longer waterproof. So seeing as I am heading up to the snow tomorrow (Whistler still has 2.6m of snow as of today) I decided to shop for some new shoes. The sale in Nike Town worked out well for me.

Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, I'm catching a Greyhound bus for 217 miles to Whistler, British Columbia (Canada) via Vancouver.