Seattle

Until Seattle, there hasn't been any place along my route that I feel like I messed up.  Looking back, I probably would have stayed a little longer in certain places (Wichita, Nova Scotia) or gotten out to see a little more of the place (Oklahoma City, Duluth).  But those would be more like making minor adjustments, not fixing major errors.

But with Seattle... I think I messed up.  I should have thought about it more before I got there, and decided to make it an audition city, or at least see it for more than one day, even if it is only three hours away from another audition city (Portland, OR).  Because as soon as I started exploring Seattle, I thought it was one of the coolest cities I've been to.

Granted, I didn't spend any time exploring the neighborhoods, or checking out my usual stops -- the grocery stores, the libraries, the coffee shops and used bookstores and consignment shops.  But from what I did see, Seattle is both very unusual and very interesting.

The first thing I did was take a Duck Tour -- the kind where the trolley turns into a boat.  I've never taken one before.  And Seattle is a great spot for those, because there is so much water in all directions.  I was unaware until I got there that the city is pretty much surrounded by water, it's not just on a coast like most cities.  And I hadn't planned on taking a Duck Tour.  It just happened to leave right from the spot where I parked my car, so I figured why not.

I was completely unaware that Seattle is home to several hundred floating houses.  Real houses where people live that are built to float on the water!  Given my queasiness about water, and tendency to be seasick (a trait which seems to be diminishing over time, though!), I didn't envy the people who lived in such houses.  But I like the idea, both for the variety and character it adds to the town and for the good use of space.

Some floating homes.

One of the original floating homes from the 1920s.

This one couldn't get a permit to be a floating home, so it actually a boat.  See the steering wheel on the balcony?  It gets sailed around the bay once a year to prove it is a boat and not a building.

The rest of my time was spent in the city center.  After the tour, which had driven through parts of the downtown area, I walked back through town to see some of the places up close.  I stopped at the semi-open-air Pike Place Market where I bought my dinner and some Wonder Buns.  I wandered through random streets, drinking espressos (it is Seattle, after all!) while avoiding Starbucks.  I found the most wonderful shop -- Diva Dollz -- which sells vintage-style clothing of all eras since the 1880s, and indulged in one of my very few slurges since I stopped working last year.

I didn't have many in-depth conversations with anyone in Seattle, but the place had an energy to it.  The people seemed upbeat without being chipper.  And the city had character and personality.  I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I know that once I'm done travelling, if I decide to live in or look for a job in a city that's pretty new to me, I'll want to visit that city (or cities) again before committing.  So I might still have another (much shorter!) round of travelling ahead of me.  If so, and it brings me anywhere near Seattle, I might spend more time there and give it the shot that I failed to give it the first time through.