well well, many things have happened and many places seen since the last update a few days ago, all of which have resulted in two incredibly and probably permanently sore legs....
i belive it is on thursday that i really gave my shoes a chance to show me what they could really do.
Paul lives next to a part of town called capitol hill, which is the equivalent of Oxford st for the aussies reading this. it has all the cafes, rainbow flags and an abundance of piercings, tatoos and scary dogs on leashes. the main street that goes through it is Broadway and when you walk all the way up that street, you suddenly end up in a neighbourhood of beautiful old victorian houses, and when i say beautiful, i mean it. so i walked around thoses streets for a bit and ended up in Volunteer park, named after the soldiers who volunteered to fight in the spanish-american war sometime the in past.
the park is really quite nice and i walked the 100 or so steps up the water tower which gives alright views of seattle, unfortunately, a lot of greenery hides most of the views plus there are grilles on the windows, so actually you can't see that much but i was proud of myself for walking up anyway....
the park is also the site of the Asian Art Museum, and not only is it currently hosting the collection from the seattle art museum (under renovation), it was also the first thursday of the month so the entrance was free. they had a really beautiful photography exhibition on but the thing i fell in love with was all the blown glass stuff they had on. apparently seattle is quite good at it and i can believe it because some pieces did not make sense to me, so ridiculously beautiful!!!
a bit further down the track, there is a green house which you can also enter for free and i hesitated a bit because i thought it would be kinda boring, and i was wrong. they had the most beautiful orchids and all kind of flowers and plants, plus a really good section of cactus, some of them in bloom. the whole thing was quite small but it was like another world and definitely worth it.
finally, the park sits next to the cemetery which was interesting because a lot of stones were chinese and looked quite cool. it is also the resting place of Bruce and Brandon Lee, so i payed them a quick visit. i'm not sure why someone would want to see the tomb of a famous person but maybe you learn something about people when you see where they will be for rest of times. just after leaving their spot, i wandered around just a little longer, sat down and turned around to take one random photo of the cemetery. the funny thing is that i realised afterwards that i coincidentally took a photo of Princess Angeline, the daughter of the indian chief Seathl who gave his name to the city i am visiting.... i thought it was some kind of sign, not sure what it means though.
with the walk back, i would say that my whole journey got me going for a good five hours and i had two pretty tired legs by the time i got home. we had a sushi dinner, it was tasty.
yesterday, the sun decided that it was time to shine and for the clouds to leave which made it the perfect day to go back to Pike Place Market, which has a variety of flowers, fish, vegies and whatever else you find on markets. it's pretty nice though because it's right on the water front so you can catch glimpses of the harbour here and there, and you can buy some nice little bits of food along the way.
From there, we caught a ferry to Bainbridge island. in a way, it feels a bit like going to manly because the ferry ride is about the same time (although the ferries here are a lot bigger since you can take your car on it and a lot faster) and you leave a beautiful harbour so plenty of picture opportunities there. in the distance we had a magical view of mount rainier and it's snow covered top. it looks like it is floating just above the horizon line and it sure feels special.
the island is pretty nice, it has a decent main street with the usual expensive artist and design like things and we discovered a really really good bakery. i hadn;t had good bread for tooooo long!!! we walked around the island for a bit and got back on the ferry.
Last night, i organised to catch up with John and Devin, two of Paul local friends who had visited nice a year and a half ago. John loves to cook and god, we looooved to eat the food. he cooked up a storm in 1 hour and it was sooo delicious, it was great. and of course, we had a really nice time catching up and laughing away.
the entry is getting long and thank goodness, it's up to what we did today now. we woke up pretty late, around noon and had some asian breakfast as the local Chinatown had a festival on. it was ok and certainly better than the sydney one we went to last year where thorpedo was posing on packets of instant noodles..... china town has one massive supermarket called wajimaya and that was good fun since they had all kinds of fun asian things like cool chopsticks and sushi themed stuff. we walked downtown but didn;t really do much down there, just went into a couple stores and i just dropped by here to write this entry on the way back home,
i think that;s enough information for now, if you even got to this point.....
the trip here is coming to an end but i am really satisfied with what i got done so far, i'm not sure what the plan is for tomorrow but i believe there is a game to watch so you'll most likely find me at the pub....
ciao for now amigos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and next time i write it will most likely be back in Cowtown!!!!