USA Holiday 3, October 14 (The 12th Fan)

Went down to the waterfront to begin. Saw some ferries, a Ferris Wheel, souvenir shops, restaurants and an aquarium. I have no plans to go to another aquarium. Actually I even threw out some free tickets to the Chicago Aquarium thinking I would not have time to go, but probably could have found time in the end, oh well.

Some waterfall installation near Century Link field.

Every city needs a Ferris Wheel.

Just up from the waterfront is the famous Pike Place Market. It was a little bit hard to make sense of because it is indoors and there a few floors and stairs to navigate. I haven't explained that very well but what I mean is that it's a bit disjointed in that you may have to down stairs, walk along and then back up other stairs to see the rest of the floor you started on. The lower levels mostly contain the typical market shops like used books and weird clothing stores, but there was a pretty neat Golden Age Collectibles shop which had a large range of comics, merchandise and zombie books. Seattle seemed to have some weird fascination with zombies from what I could tell. The highlight of the store though was the unopened packets of several series of the old Garbage Pail Kids stickers. Fantastic.

At the top level of the market was the fresh produce, the one getting the most attention involved the staff throwing fish around. Just outside of the market was the first ever Starbucks store. Further up the street was a modern Starbucks store that I saw some other stupid people taking photos of.

Starbucks.

The main entrance to Pike Place market.

Stopped off at the Klondike Gold Rush Museum on the way to the football, mostly because it was free. It was quite interesting and well presented and I learnt a few things about the gold rush and how it affected Seattle and the surrounding areas into Canada. I also now know the reason for having a chocolate Klondike Bar.

Possibly an art museum, the hand swings up and down.

Some log cabin typical of the gold rush era.

For the afternoon it was Seattle Seahawks vs New England Patriots at Century Link Field. I finally thought to bring some earplugs to the game, mostly because Seattle is known to have the loudest crowd, supposedly they got accused of pumping artificial crowd noise into the stadium through the speaker system.

The earplugs were a great idea, as was buying tickets in an undercover section, as there was some persistent light rain during most of the match. The match again was a good one, particularly in the first half before the scoring slowed down, probably due to the conditions. Sadly the damn Patriots lost yet another close game 23-24 at the end, but it is usually not too bad when the home team wins. Another disappointment was the food stores not selling any souvenir cups, they usually sell these good quality big plastic cups - I already got one in Atlanta and New Orleans - but here they just sold regular bottles of Coca-Cola.

Walking straight into the stadium from downtown.

Two national anthems before the game, and another one that is better than Australia's.

Tom Brady had everything under control, or so it seemed.

Seahawks win by one point.