The climate did have something to do with it. It didn't actually rain much if at all while I was there, it was in fact glorious sunshine for part of the weekend, but there was a proper damp chill to the air, it felt like a real October for the first time since I have been in the USA. I actually got to wear a coat, which is very handy when you have loads of stuff in your pockets. And it is so green - there are trees everywhere, dripping with moisture and smelling fresh.
I stayed in a fabulous B&B called the Gatewood, which was family run and had just four guest bedrooms. It was a traditional wooden house, built against a hill, with a balcony around the entrance level on the first floor. (Which is to say the first floor above the ground floor, I haven't gone native to that extent just yet). The inside was warm and comfortable with wooden beams and soft chairs, the bedroom was cool, but with a thick soft duvet. I slept better in a cooler climate than I have in weeks in California.
On Friday night I wandered out after arrival to find something to eat, and managed to get quite lost. I felt quite alone and homesick at first, missing the familiarity of California as well as my family back in England. Eventually however I discovered a supermarket where I could buy a sandwich, and once fed and watered began to feel more positive. On Saturday I knew I had to finish some slides for a presentation I was giving on Tuesday, so I headed into town to visit our Seattle office. I decided I would get a bus and a water taxi from West Seattle where the B&B was based, to Downtown (which I am learning to say without even thinking about Petula, although I don't always quite manage it).
Finding the bus was a struggle. Public transport here is not wonderful. I got a Caltrain from San Francisco to Palo Alto one evening last week and realised that it is impossible to see the names of the stations in the dark as you pull in, which makes it difficult not to miss your stop. But that is nothing compared to the lack of information about the bus shuttle connecting to the water taxi. I walked a couple of miles towards the main road where I was told I would find it, past bus stops that announced the shuttle was free but gave no indication of whether it actually stopped there (it didn't) or when. Eventually, by asking everybody I could find, I was pointed towards a stop where a shuttle bus was waiting. The driver was incomprehensible, and pretty rude to some passengers. I only arrived half way through a confusing conversation, but as far as I could tell he was explaining that some of the passengers had got on to a bus going in the wrong direction and they should have waited on the other side of the road, however there was only one bus (him) and it was a circular route, so the only advantage of waiting on the correct side of the road would have been to wait longer to board exactly the same bus rather than sitting on it while it made a bit of a loop.
So I got chatting to three young people on the bus, and one mentioned that he had stayed in the Lake District for a year. It turned out that he had been to Capenwray, the Bible school which sent a group of young people to our local church to run a week long mission last year. It was great to meet somebody with whom I felt such an immediate connection, even though he had not actually been in the group that came to Sale. I rode with the three of them to the waterside, where the water taxi ticketing system was even more incomprehensible than the bus system, and eventually the four of us made it onto the water taxi.
I should say that a Seattle water taxi is nothing like a Venetian water taxi (the only other place I have ever heard the term used) and is certainly not a gondola (the mind boggles!), if anything it is more like a water bus (vaporetto perhaps) but it most closely resembles a small passenger ferry. It is public transport run to a timetable, and probably slower than the normal buses that run between West Seattle and Downtown (via a road bridge). It does however provide an impressive view of the city as you approach from the water, and I would recommend it to anybody visiting Seattle.
Once in Downtown, I decided to walk to the office. Seattle is built on an approximate grid system, with some very straight streets running up some pretty steep hills, very much like San Francisco. The comparisons don't stop there, it feels very much like San Francisco too with its liberal attitudes, bohemian feel and young vibe. However the climate is much more like Manchester, which felt like a plus to me.
I was blessed on this trip by the foresight of a colleague in Seattle, who was looking out for me because she is English even though we had not yet met. This guardian angel not only found me the B&B, but also sent me a visitor's pass to allow me access to the office at the weekend "just in case", and taxi vouchers meaning I could get around and charge my travel to the firm's account. She also gave me the wise advice not to pay to go up the Space Needle because the office was higher and had a better view. As it turned out, the office pass was an absolute boon, because I could not only check out in advance where I would be on Monday, but also had somewhere to finish the work I had to do on Saturday, somewhere on the 70th floor with a fabulous view over the water and across to the hills.
After finishing my slides (and feeling a lot happier about the presentation) I followed a friend's recommendation and went on a tour of the Seattle underground. This was probably the most amusing, entertaining and informative historical tour I have ever been on. It turns out that when the oldest part of Seattle burnt down in the nineteenth century, the local council took advantage of the opportunity to raise the level of the streets which were very prone to flooding with raw sewage. But because they could not agree on who should bear the full cost of this, they raised up the level of the actual roadways by building retaining walls down each side, putting the traffic one storey above the pavement, and forcing local people to cross the road using ladders. (Who'd have thought that an argument about American government finance would lead to a situation of such total absurdity?). Eventually they resolved the disagreement and put beams across the gap between the buildings and the retaining wall of the raised up streets to support a new sidewalk, turning the upstairs of the existing buildings into the downstairs, and the ground floor into a basement, and creating a network of tunnels under the pavements.
On Sunday I met some Seattle colleagues for brunch, although by the time we got fed it was more like lunch. The original choice of restaurant kept us waiting so long we decamped to the Mexican one next door, so it was tortillas for me again, but it didn't matter, it was just good to relax with friends. After that my guardian angel took me on a tour of the famous Seattle fish market, and then across to the EMP museum by mono-rail to see exhibitions of science fiction icons and popular culture. I finished the day wandering the park around the EMP museum, watching small children getting soaked by a very entertaining water musical feature, and then visiting a gallery of glass sculptures.
So apart from discovering that I love yet another American city, what else have I learned?
(1) Forks is a real place, about four hours away from Seattle. I have yet to discover whether Bon Temps also exists. I am pretty sure that vampires don't actually exist in either place.
(2) Seattle is named after a local Red Indian chief.
(3) The street grid system which is so common over here is in fact two grid systems in Seattle, one at 45º to the other, and this is due to disagreement between two of the city's founding fathers who owned different parts of the land. I have been wondering why roads are laid out in this grid pattern regardless of the gradient, but I suppose I have been approaching the question all wrong: why would you choose to lay out a city in any other way if you were starting from scratch?
(4) I like to watch small children falling over and being soaked by fountains of cold water. Does this make me a bad person?
(5) There is a famously colourful wall in Seattle covered in different pieces of chewing gum. I didn't however add to it.
(6) American young people can be terribly polite, and on at least two occasions this weekend called me "sir". I actually quite like this, but I hope it doesn't mean they think I am old.
(7) It is widely known that Americans call jam "jelly" and jelly "jello"', but who'd have imagined the consequences for a popular fictional character? Over here Roger Hargreaves' Mr Jelly is known as Mr Nervous.
(8) It is possible to write about Seattle without using the word "sleepless", but I've just blown it.
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