USA Holiday 3

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October 01
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October 12
October 13
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October 18
October 19
October 20

USA Holiday 3, October 20 (The Dust Bowl)

Last stop Los Angeles. Flying into LAX with Virgin US and out with Virgin AU, so both times I got to experience one of the worst terminals ever. There's like two places to buy food and that's it.

The hotel offered a shuttle again so got that, dropped off bags, no sign of my relatives who were also staying in the hotel that weekend, so came up with a quick plan to visit Hollywood. From the hotel in Hawthorne near the airport, you have to take a train east, another north then another west to get onto the North Hollywood line, but it only takes a little over an hour.

Got off at Hollywood-Western and walked up to Griffith Park. Wasn't really sure how long and arduous the hike would be but I figured it couldn't be too bad (please not another Grouse Grind). The trail was very dusty but took half an hour or less, and didn't require too much effort. At the top there is an observatory, and you can get a decent view of downtown LA, West Hollywood I think is the other recognisable skyline, and also the HOLLYWOODLAND sign.

Exit planet dust.

Hollywood Hills.

Your reward at the top. It's an observatory!

The underwhelming LA skyline.

Walked quite a few blocks down Hollywood Boulevard afterwards, to get to Highland Avenue. I don't think I had been this far east on Hollywood previously, it seemed like there was a lot of new development underway. Despite this, it is very surprising how close to the prime Hollywood Walk Of Fame area you can still find some really crappy run-down places, or simply vacant blocks of land.

I was going to stop into one of the places like Guinness World Records that I hadn't been to before, but was running a bit short on time. Shopped for a few gifts, including a coffee mug that Jason managed to drop and almost break within five minutes of purchasing.

Some fun artwork and the Capitol Records building.

Hollywood & Highland.

Hollywood & Don't Know.

The Hollywood & Highland Center.

So that was it for LA and the trip, as the final day I just spent catching up with some relatives on their way to New York - and getting stuck in Hurricane Sandy, and finally getting a chance to watch a few hours of NFL during the day!

USA Holiday 3, October 19 (Seize The Bay)

After yesterdays heat I expected a similar day to follow. Wrong again. In Chicago, New Orleans and Vancouver I have also arrived to a pleasant warm day, only for every other day that follows to have a sharp drop off in temperature. Seattle was jut the opposite, where the last day was the only time the sun made an appearance, but I still wouldn't have described it as warm.

I had spent a lot of time researching and planning the rest of the trip, but the last couple of days in SF and LA I didn't have a lot to go on. I must have run out of time or motivation, plus I have already been to both cities at least once. Jason found an advertisment for a MythBusters interactive exhibit which sounded fun, but probably designed more for kids, but it was all the way down in San Jose, so would have taken almost the whole day by itself. There was also a Jelly Belly factory tour which sounded fantastic, but it was a long way past Oakland and not accessible by public transport.

So instead I just jumped on the clunky Caltrain again to downtown San Francisco, only about three stops away.

The station is right near the San Fransisco Giants park, so I had a look inside their store but I'm not a huge fan of orange. They had just gone down 3-1 in their division series, little did I know they would then win 7 straight games and win the world series. So I was about a week early for their world series victories and two week early for the celebration parade.

SF Giants.

Walked up along the bay on The Embarcadero (it's Spanish for wharf, but it's actually a street in this case). Past the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge, and up to Pier 39 and Fishermans Wharf. Saw a few new things on the way and a few old things too, such as Coit Tower on top of the hill and Alcatraz just barely visible out at sea.

The Embarcadero and Bay Bridge.

Alcatraz.

Not sure why it has Melbourne on the side.

Alligator bread loaf.

At the end of Fishermans Wharf I got in line for the cable cars. The line was about 20% of what it was last time I was here, and only had to wait for the second car to get on. Each car seems to idle for 5-10 minutes at the end of the line before taking off, despite the car already being full. I didn't have the best spot for photos, since I didn't fancy trying to take photos with one hand and hanging on to the car with the other, especially since there are a few crazy hills along the route.

On a clear day the Golden Gate Bridge would be clearly visible. It was not a clear day.

Passing another cable car.

People hanging on for their lives as we go uphill.

Inside view, the driver blocks any chance of a good photo.

There are just a few stops along the route where people can get on and off, and some people got on at the front - the place where you hang off the side of the car - as the ticket inspector came up through the cabin and asked them for tickets or money. I have no idea how you would continue to hold on and get your wallet out for change at the same time. Seems like it would be either impossible or lead to a fatality.

Passing by Lombard Street.

Another go at Lombard Street.

Got lunch at this place called Burger Meister, which was sadly almost right back where the cable cars departed from. This place was terrific for one reason, you get to construct your own burger. You order off a standard menu, and I didn't realise the default order *does not* come with cheese, but when they serve it to you on a plate all of the fresh burger ingredients are laid out on the plate for you to put together as you please - lettuce, tomato, onions, pickle etc. Very cool.

I did not manage to locate Japan Town the last time I was in SF, so made a better effort this time. They had a couple of interesting looking structures so I guess it was a bit Japanese, but no neon lights or anything like that. I went inside a J-Pop Centre which I thought might have some cool anime, merchandise or general Japanese stuff but there wasn't much there. I almost didn't realise there was an East and West mall at either side of the main square too. There were a lot more stores in there, I didn't find any t-shirts I liked again, but it was fun to look around anyway. I would say the best part of Japan Town was that there was lots of Japanese girls.

Japan Town.

More Japan Town.

Back to downtown, there was a new UNIQLO that had just opened in the last couple of weeks. This place was packed. To describe the place, it sells clothes in a wide variety of colours. So basically they have a small to medium range of styles, mens and womens, and then they mass produce it in all the colours they support, maybe ten in total. The clothes don't appear to be branded and are intended to be good value. The stores started in Japan, I think I remember seeing a couple when I was in Tokyo.

Union Square.

UNIQLO. It means unique clothing.

The end of the line for the cable cars, and my trip to SF.

Without having any plans for the day, I'd say it turned out to be a success.

USA Holiday 3, October 18 (The Gold Rush)

I had until 5:20pm to get to a football game in San Francisco, which sounded like plenty of time.

11:30 Leave Seattle
1:35 Arrive San Francisco
1:45 Call hotel for shuttle pickup
2:30 Shuttle arrives at airport
2:50 Shuttle arrives at hotel
3:20 Train leaves, next one would not have been until 4:20
3:30 Train arrives at station
3:50 Followed crowd to get to the stadium

So made it with a little time to spare in the end. The guy working at the front desk of the hotel was also going to the game and offered to give us a lift, but he wasn't leaving until after 4pm so I didn't take him up on his offer. Like usual there was no signs to help getting from the train station to the stadium, so you just have to follow the crowd through the streets, through a business park full of tailgaters, and then up a hill to reach Candlestick Park.

Walking to Candlestick.

As a side note, they are building a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers in the couple of years. The catch, it is 70km from San Francisco, in Santa Clara. I don't understand how the fans could be happy with that.

As another side note, this was the third hotel in a row where I was given room 215, seems like a pretty unlikely coincidence.

After a week and a half in Vancouver and Seattle, it was good to finally have a sunny day. Except the side of the stadium I was on was directly facing into the sun. There is a big hill that blocks out some of the sun, but it wasn't until about the second quarter that some shade relief came through. Attending a late afternoon game is quite a strange experience, you start in blistering hot sun and end three and a half hours later, well into the evening and a whole lot cooler.

Candlestick Park.

Baking in the sun before the game.

Seat view.

The game was very low scoring and neither team played particularly great. I also had an idiot sitting next to me that stood up on just about every play of the game. Something I still don't really understand at these games is why people are so keen to hand out high fives to strangers. If a particularly important play happens: a touchdown, a long pass or a key defensive play, people are up and about looking for fellow high fivers. The 49ers held on to win 13-6.

The first half.

The second half.

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.

USA Holiday 3, October 16 (FIRE. WALK. WITH. ME)

Today was either going to be great or a complete disaster. The problem is that to get to the towns of Snoqualmie and just beyond to North Bend requires two buses, the second of which only runs once per hour, at best.

The first bus to the Issaqah Transit Centre was no problem, as it runs every 20 minutes from downtown and I only had to wait 5 minutes for it. From the transit centre, I must have written down the wrong departure time, as I had to wait more like 30 minutes than 15, but it probably didn't matter too much as the previous bus left way too early anyway.

Waiting around in Issaqah.

The bus finally arrived and I got off at Snoqualmie, with about a hour before the next bus comes that continues on to the final destination at North Bend. Snoqualmie is a pretty small town, so I just had a quick scan of what was around - a train muesum, tenpin bowling and some shops basically - before heading towards the falls. On the way was the log shown in the intro to Twin Peaks!

Arrived in Snoqualmie.

The log.

A close up of the log if you missed it the first time.

A collection of old or broken down trains.

Found the way up to the top of the falls pretty easily. Just at the top is a hotel called the Salish Lodge, the exterior was presented as one of the locations throughout Twin Peaks, only it was called The Great Northern.

The Great Northern.

The Salish Lodge and Spa.

The Snoqualmie Falls were a lot larger than I thought and the water spray coming all the way up to the lookout was pretty intense too. I stayed long enough to get some good photos then got out before my camera succumbed to water damage. The gift shop at the falls surprisingly did not appear to have any Twin Peaks stuff, but perhaps that is understandable when the show was cancelled about 20 years ago.

Snoqualmie Falls.

The top observation deck.

The lower observation deck.

Braving the mist.

A clearer view above the falls.

Ran back into Snoqualmie just in time for the next bus to continue on. The last stop was just past North Bend, at North Bend Outlet Mall, where they had another Nike Outlet Store! There was about an hour to use up before the next bus, so had a look inside, got a cheap shirt and then headed across to the Chevron petrol station. At the Seahawks game they said they sold souvenir cups there for a limited time, since they don't sell them at the stadium I suppose, but I could not find any.

Went into North Bend next to visit Twede's Cafe. In the show it's called the Double R Diner or something, but it's the same place. In the show they say it is famous for cherry pie, but I ordered some coconut cream pie instead, it was great. Got some photos of the place and again just in time for the next bus back to the transit centre, and then back to downtown Seattle. Everything went pretty much perfectly and as quick as possible, so that was great.

Mount Si possibly.

Some other mountain in the opposite direction.

Actually in North Bend, not Snoqualmie.

That's damn fine coffee you got here.

And damn good cherry pie.

That took up most the day, so the only thing left to do was to hike up to Kerry Park to catch a view of the city. By hike I mean walking up the street, but Queen Anne Avenue has a killer hill. There was already a bunch of amateur photographers staking out spots in the park, which is apparently the thing to do. It is pretty much the perfect spot, just far enough away to be able to view the skyline.

Kerry Park.

A similar view.

A better view from the east side of the park.