USA Holiday 3, October 17 (Sound Off)

Just one final day to finish off the last of the things on my todo list, and some other stuff just to fill in the time. Took the bus over to Fremont, walked around for a little while and found a troll under the bridge, and the Lenin and Rocket artifacts. Not sure what the purpose of any of them really is.

The Fremont Troll.

Everyone's favourite Russian, or was that Stalin.

Some rocket.

Within walking distance also was Gas Works Park which is a pretty cool park, it has been created on the site of a former gasification plant. I have no idea what it means to gasify something, probably turning something that wasn't a gas into a gas... The neat thing about the park is that they have left some of the old plant behind, it's fenced off so you can't go exploring inside, but it's still better than nothing.

The gas works at Gas Works Park.

A more distant view of Seattle.

Other stuff at Gas Works Park.

Back in Seattle I went to the Milepost 31 free! exhibit. It's a mandatory exhibit to explain to the residents about the massive tunnel they are building underneath the waterfront to replace the crappy looking overpass they have now. More importantly, the overpass is supposedly sinking into the ground slowly, and is a risk to collapse if another earthquake hits the city. I found some of the information about the process and the history of that part of the city was worthwhile.

Had a search around Pike Place Market for some lunch, found another Thai place. I asked for the red tofu curry or maybe it was the green tofu curry. I asked if I could get it mild but the woman said it only really comes spicy. So I had a go anyway and it wasn't quite the disaster as the previous time, but still a little beyond my capacity.

Booked in for a harbour cruise that went along the waterfront, over towards Alki Point and then back again. The narrator had some pretty good facts about Seattle, he even pointed out the location of MTV's The Real Would house (like 10 years ago) but I wasn't paying attention to where he was pointing so missed out on that. I was lucky to be seated on the good side of the boat, otherwise I would have been taking photos of Alki Point and the sea for most of the hour.

I'm on a boat.

The Ferris Wheel and downtown once again...

Olympic Sculpture Park.

The ball thing is some local newspaper, and a hill with TV towers.

The view from Alki Point.

Sea Lions.

The two stadiums.

The skyline, they have a height limit of 1000 feet or something.

Since I budgeted a whole five days for Seattle there was a little spare time to catch a movie. I would have liked to have seen either Silent Hill 2 (still does not even have a release date in Australia, but it wasn't out for another week) or Looper (the running time was too long), so settled on Taken 2. The highlight of the movie for me was probably one of the ads at the beginning, they had this vintage lobby snacks advertisment where the lyrics start with "Lets all go to the lobby", which Mr Burns parodies when he enters a film making competition in an episode of The Simpsons.

Once the movie had finished it was time to head back down to Century Link Field to watch the Seattle Sounders play Real Salt Lake in the soccer. The atmosphere was pretty good as far as soccer games go, and the quality was definitely above the A-League. A couple of low points too though, too many idiots standing up whenever the ball goes towards the corner or they think a goal scoring chance is starting up, and one of the Sounders players got a red card in the first half, which lead to a less than spectacular 0-0 game. The location of the seats was pretty good for about $15 a ticket. I also liked the Kurt Cobain banner at one of the supporter ends. Not quite as good as JT: CAPTAIN, LEADER, LEGEND but not bad.

Cheap seats and only about five rows back.

The pregame warm up.

A national anthem and fireworks with every game.

Seats behind the goals.

Another opportunity that did not lead to a goal.