Denver to Vancouver Summer 2019

11th August 2019

A late night bowling meant we all slept in, so there was a bit of panic getting up and out today. We had to drive to Seattle today, where we leave the car for good, so we were on a bit of a tight schedule to get on the road.

Our motel was very close to an amazing bridge called the Astoria–Megler Bridge. It’s not very pretty, but I challenge anyone to look at it and not be amazed.

The bridge is 4 miles across the Columbia River estuary (and very high in the middle to accommodate the largest ships) and was the final segment of U.S. Route 101 to be completed between Olympia, Washington and LA. Andrew is not a fan of high things in general, so it took a bit of persuading for him to drive over it (usually me offering to drive is enough to clinch the deal).

I love a bridge! Oli and I squealed with delight and Andrew stayed pretty silent. I did wonder where Oregon ends, and Washington starts and we soon saw a small sign on the bridge - ‘welcome to Washington’ - the usual fanfare then.

view from the car (sorry for obstructed view)

it’s a grey day today, with storms forecast, so it made sense to be in the Evergreen state of Washington. It is REALLY green!

We stopped at a small town called South Bend, that had a bright blue hut in a field called Coastal Coffee 101 where a pretty girl not much older than Oli made us the most amazing coffee and bacon sandwiches.

Apart from a few great town names, the three hour trip to Seattle was pretty uneventful, and we hit the first heavy traffic of the whole trip passing Olympia and Tacoma long before we approached Seattle itself.

We got to the hotel - the Hotel 5 - Staypineapple and Andrew left Oli and me in the room while he dropped the car back to Avis. The hotel is great. Another cleverly themed hotel - pretty much pineapple mad. The room is modern and comfortable.

Once Andrew was back, we started to re-weigh our luggage in advance for our short flight across the border to Canada tomorrow. Lots of throwing things away to try to get under the allowance. Fingers crossed!

Time for a walk to see what Seattle has to offer. I have to say, first impressions are that it is LOVELY here. To try to describe it…the hills of San Fran, the cleanliness of Denver, mixed with a little Canary Wharf (trees and very modern glass high rise offices).

The first stop for us was Amazon’s HQ. Amazon is a funny ol’ beast. We buy a lot of things from Amazon, but now that it is such a successful company, it feels bad to admit that is what we do. We sit at our desk, order what we need and it’s with us the next day. Not great for the small business. But you can’t take away from it how it has such a good business model and always re-inventing itself.

Amazon are the largest employer in Seattle (over 40,000 of an inner city population of 724,000). Their headquarters is in the heart of downtown meaning that people can walk to work or have a very small commute.

The building was quite understated. No branding at all.

As an aside but related to Amazon, on Oli’s suggestion earlier in the trip we had listened to the ‘H3’ podcast interviewing Andrew Yang, one of the Democratic candidates who featured in the autumn debates and who has some pretty controversial ideas - including Amazon paying appropriate taxes in the US (currently nil) and using this money to pay $1,000 a month to all adult Americans as a ‘dividend’ which would act as compensation to them having lost work due to the digital revolution. Quite thought provoking and definitely worth a listen.

We carried on walking through the downtown area until we got to Pike Place Market. This is a huge indoor market that sells all sorts of fresh produce. As it is Sunday, we hadn’t expected it to be open, but it had clearly been open all day, and they were tidying up. Still lots of tourists around. Strong smells of flowers and fish!

We found what we were looking for though - the first ever Starbucks! It was founded in 1971, by three friends who had met at university and started by just selling coffee beans. By 1984, they had decided to open as a place to drink coffee. By 2015, there were over 22,000 stores. Quite a success story.

There was a queue to get in, so we just took some photos.

A short walk away is the Post Alley - a dark alleyway that leads down to the harbour but hides two strange features - Post-It Note alley (see what they did there) and the bubblegum wall.

Post It note alley, it’s just that. A wall of Post it Notes - hand written with all sorts of messages. From love, to funny, to political statements and personal advertisements. We took some time to look over them. What I like, is that with every gust of wind, some of them flew away, carrying the messages through Seattle.

The bubblegum wall is not for the squeamish. (aka Gum Wall or Wall of Gum). It was ‘born’ in the 1990s when local patrons in line for a show at Post Alley’s Market Theatre stuck their used gum on the wall while they waited, the Gum Wall has grown piece by piece to cover an enormous expanse of the walls of the alley. The smell of gum is quite nice, and the overall effect is odd, but fun.

For 3 days in November 2015, the Pike Place Market Preservation pressure-washed, scraped, and cleaned the wall for the first time in 20 years… but beginning the very next weekend, locals and tourists collectively started to recreate the wall again.

I thought it was fun - Oli and Andrew, not so much.

Leaving behind the smell, we walked down to the harbour. Very similar to Fisherman’s Wharf in SF, but cleaner and less tacky. We had been recommended a burger place called Kidd Valley. It was really really nice. We were a bit tired today, so just wanted a quick meal. It fitted the bill perfectly.

We made our way back to the hotel with a small stroll through some beautiful buildings. New shiny sky scrapers rubbing shoulders with some great 1930s ones.

We sat in the hotel bar for a quick drink and played scrabble on a huge magnetic board on the wall. Oli won! Ha ha ha!

Looking forward to seeing more of Seattle tomorrow.