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We have an early flight to catch up to San Francisco where I will then jump on another flight to Seattle while Jodie will get one back to the UK. Our first flight is only a couple of hours but because I have an early afternoon flight to Seattle we have to get the red eye. We land in San Francisco around 10ish so I have a 4 hour wait and Jodie has a 8 hour wait. We just check out the airport shops and grab some lunch and then me and Jodie say our goodbyes and go our seperate ways, thankfully she was able to get a seat as she was on standby so wasn't stuck in the airport on her own for long.
I land in Seattle at about 5 and the first thing I notice is that there are trees and rivers everywhere. I get the train down to downtown Seattle and have to walk for about half an hour to my hostel. Considering how green it was just when I landed I expected it to be the same in downtown Seattle but it isn't and it is a complete dump. When I reach the hostel there are about 30 bums around the door, seems like a great location! As I'm on my own and I don't really know what is around the hostel I just stayed in hoping for a quiet night but it didn't turn out that way. In the room next to me I hear an argument starting. A couple are fully screaming at each other and the girl is in floods of tears. It sounds like it gets proper heated because all I could hear was things being thrown and broken. It carried on for about an hour till the girl decides that she can no longer take it and opens the window and threatens to throw herself out, all I hear is her shouting that if he comes any closer then she jump. The reception has been alerted at this point so they call the police and I can hear the receptionist and the police through the wall trying to coax her back inside the room. They do finally succeed and arrest both her and him. The next morning I saw the damage and the mirror and furniture have been smashed to pieces, still don't know what it was all about but what a crazy start to Seattle!
Next day I was planning to go up the space needle but the weather is proper s***ty so decide not to. I head down to the Pike Market which apparently is quite famous. It is a huge Market, stretches on for about 6 blocks and is 3 levels high. It has stalls selling all kinds of things, there is even one selling used fisherman boots that are torn, why anyone would want a pair of them I don't know!
I carry on walking through the Market and further on I hear a load of commotion, next thing I see is a huge fish being flying threw the air over peoples head into another stall!
When I get down there it is a fresh fish stall and every so often they all start shouting and then all of them throw big salmons to each other, no idea why but it was quite funny to see. One of the guys working there told me that they have been on a few films and shows (pretty sure I saw it on one of those videos Barclays make you watch every so often but not 100% sure)
After I finished with the Market I walked around the downtown area to see what the place is like and the whole place is an absolute s***hole, bar one or two blocks. The whole city is filthy and there seems to bums everywhere, I also found out later that it's better not to venture out too late as they have quite a bad problem with black gangs.
I walked around for a while, not really seeing anything good or interesting (apart from Starbucks first ever coffee shop!) so head to the visitor centre to see what else I could do. All the women could recommend was either the Space Needle, the Market or either the museum of art or the glass museum. I told her I wasn't really interested in the musuems and all she could say was 'well maybe you could go to the theatre but I don't think there are too many decent shows on', great!
As there is pretty much nothing to do here I find the nearest cinema and watch Inception, which was an absolute class film. When I got back to my hostel I checked out hostels in Vancouver and transport up to there to see if I can cut short Seattle as it is an awful place. I was going to lose out on too much money and as I only had one full day left here and hadn't seen the Space Needle I decided to just leave it.
The weather today is a lot better so I'm going to head to the Space Needle to see what that's like. I left pretty lateish, hoping to waste some of the day but I was still fed up. I walked along the harbour towards the Space Needle to see if it was any nicer down there but because they have a freeway right on the coast most of it is blocked off with fences and full of grafitti. Towards the end of the harbour though they had an Olympic park from when the Olympics were here. I was expecting a big park but all it was was a small grass covered bridge over the freeway with a couple of art sculptures on it. Mum and Dads back garden is bigger than it so i'm not sure how they can call it a park, Atlanta's one totally puts it to shame.
The Space Needle is pretty impressive though, only thing is that it's not the biggest building in Seattle any more so it gets a bit dwarfed but there are great views from the top. I spent about an hour up there just having a coffee and looking out at the views so it was quite good. When I finished up there though I was fully lost for ideas of what to do so I went back to the cinema. This time I watched Piranha 3D and it's that bad that it is actually quite entertaining. It's really corny and has a lot of Piranhas feasting on peoples fake t*** and even quite a graphic scene of one eating a guys d*** (which made my feet go all wierd!)
I leave in the morning for Vancouver and to be honest I cannot wait. Seattle has been a massive let down and is far and away the worst place I have seen so far, nothing else comes close to it.
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