We had Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday in Seattle (Sunday was spent travelling to Las Vegas which thanks to United Airlines turned a half day trip into an all day affair finally getting us into our hotel in Las Vegas after midnight) and managed to get a few sights in whilst maintaining a fairly laid back pace.

On the Wednesday we managed to get down to Pike Place Markets after stopping in at the Kent REI store – a well known chain of of Recreational Equipment and clothing stores. It was pretty late in the day though and the markets were shutting down so we decided to come back the following day but we still got a good look around and saw the famous fish chucking markets.

Found a little place called Merry Tails in these markets – had fun checking out all the Border Collie items and maybe making a few purchases 🙂 We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe during the Happy Hour and scored a cheap and filling meal and also scored free live music gig tickets for Friday night – which we promptly forgot about and missed! D’oh.

Thursday we had a lazy lie in and headed out to the Pike Markets round lunchtime and carried on down to the wharf area – called Fisherman’s Landing which has the new ferris wheel and the aquarium.

This had quite a few travellers taking snaps – I think I just found it bizarre and more than a little unsanitary. It’s the Gum Wall.

And it covers quite a percentage of wall!

Thursday we checked out the Markets a little more thoroughly and then we took a half hour walk through to the Experience Music Project Museum which had some pretty cool exhibits. It had a Nirvana exhibition and an Icons of Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror plus an Avatar display.

Seattle is pretty much a hotspot for spawning many of the bands that have made it big. And plenty of those who have made it big in the alt rock scene.

Stargate fans will recognise this one.

This was fun – practice your screaming for the camera in case that horror movie role ever comes along and falls in your lap.

I think I need more work – it almost looks like a scream of laughter rather than terror.

JASON!!!!!

ALIENS!!

AVATAR!!!!

We then used our trusty phone navigational systems to locate a restaurant recommended by David and Daisy called Lecosho. This food was YUMMY!!!! And the service was excellent. Tim probably has more pics on his blog since his blog is like the food journaling of this trip. HERE.

The next day we had tickets to go see The Dark Knight Rises – which was very entertaining and as a bonus we got to see trailers for The Hobbit and the new Superman movie The Man Of Steel. Plus a couple of other interesting looking flicks. It was the day after the tragedy in Colorado and we certainly noticed a couple more police patrolling around but really – if someone has it in their mind to do this then there is very little a few extra cops present are going to be able to do. This longer tweet on Twitter by Jason Alexander (yeah he’s just some actor who was on Seinfeld) was one of the best responses to the whole event. Americans as a group of people can certainly do something to lessen the chances of so many fatalities happening. But will they? 69% of the NRA membership voted themselves to restrict the ownership of the semi automatics and the automatic weapons and yet it still didn’t go though. Gun ownership is not the problem – ownership of military weapons that can kill this many in this short a time is. I see an obvious application of compromise here and yet there’s still such a loud resistance. Anyway – this film was good and no one should let something like this stop them from seeing it.

We headed back to the Hotel after that and then made plans to check out Museum of Flight at Boeing Field the next day before heading out to Auburn to catch Florence and The Machine at the White River Amphitheatre.

I know this! I’ve been sending HAND WRITTEN postcards. I am socially correct after all! My soul is saved!

Anyhoo after that we started the drive to Auburn and by way of the magic of google found this place.

The staff were quite surprised to learn we’d travelled all the way from Australia and we got our yummy appetiser Rock Wings free for our troubles. They asked how we found them as they were curious. The service was excellent, the food very good and reasonably priced and the music and decor great. Tim even grabbed a tee shirt. A good find by Google.

Then it was onto Florence and The Machine –

BRILLIANT! Great concert venue, Florence herself is amusingly left off centre with her barefooted self admittedly crazy cakes dancing. Her voice is even MORE when it’s live and it’s great to hear that her live voice is identical to the album and even better cos it’s live. Some of her songs hit notes that gave me goosebumps it was that good. Tim surprisingly knew more songs than he thought he would. It was a good night. 🙂

And that concluded Saturday evening…the next day it was bye bye Seattle and Hello LAS VEGAS!!! Las Vegas definitely needs a blog post of it’s own. That’ll be next!