Thursday, December 22, 2011

On The Road Again


Cruised south Tuesday through the Adirondack Park to US87 and thence to New Jersey and the fabled Garden State Parkway.  It was mostly parked and didn’t speed our journey a whit.  Nonetheless, we eventually arrived at Stefan and Jenn’s place and spent a pleasant evening catching up with them and the grandkids.

Wednesday, after refilling the car with gas at 75-cents/litre, GPSsed our way to a Park and Fly buried in the bowels of Newark, dumped the car and got the shuttle to Newark International.  After a few chaotic gate changes and ludicrous security and after discovering that Continental now charges $25/bag to check luggage, we lifted off to Seattle.  The luggage charges result in people bringing hockey-sized duffle-bags into the plane and blithely taking a complete overhead compartment for their one bag.  Last one aboard?  Good luck finding space.  Especially when, like ours, the flight is completely full.  We were also charged for the pathetic meal, but seatbelts are still free.  The in-flight entertainment is not, however; $7.95 to activate your wee TV for the 5.5 hour flight.  Happily, we had our Kindles and a few movies on the Netbook so, no worries.

Staggered out of SeaTac terminal at 2AM our time, into the rented Nissan and, GPS in West-Coast mode, moseyed off to our Philippe and Maria's place in the Queen Anne part of Seattle.

Next day, out and about for a neighbourhood stroll, discovered a charming city  (sunny, to the locals' surprise) with lots of quirky street-level art.  Home of Starbuck's, Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon, seems as though there's lots of money around.


Statues of bus riders at a bus stop


Statue of Lenin decorated for Christmas


And of course, Seattle is the home of Starbuck's so...


The Fremont Troll guarding the High-Level bridge


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