Location: Seattle
Miles Travelled: 6246
Time Zone: GMT-8 (PST)

What a fantastic week its been here in Seattle...this city is really great. Of course a lot of our experience is down to our luxurious surroundings and fabulous host who has shown us a brilliant time. Thanks for everything Mairead...you are a star!

We arrived on Friday and had a lovely bbq with a few drinks and a big catch up chat. On Saturday we headed down to Fremont (the arty\hippy area of Seattle) to watch the Fremont Solstice Fair parade.
The parade was pretty unique as it started off with a procession of naked bicycle riders some painted and some not...an interesting sight to say the least! The parade also had lots of floats and gorgeous costumes and dancing and filled the whole area with a great atmosphere. A lot of the streets in the area were closed and had lots of stalls selling everything and anything. There were a few music stages dotted about and also a really cool exhibition of weird and wonderful cars - our favourite was the high-heel car! On Saturday evening we hit the town and following some yummy Thai food we sampled a few of the lovely Seattle bars and stumpled (new word - the act of short people stumbling) home.







We hit the road (and the sea) on Sunday and headed for Olympic National Park and after a longer than planned drive following the ferry crossing we got there and went to see the beautiful 60-ft falls. We then headed up the mountain to check out the view from Hurricane Ridge but alas we ended up in the clouds before getting to the top and had to turn back as the visibility was terrible, but we did get to see some great views on the way up and down! We then stopped in the woods for a picnic lunch before heading back. After nearly 9 hours driving Mairead (the driver!!) and us had a quiet night in front of the telly.

We decided to declare Monday as a Restday as both Ang and I were a bit sniffly so we lounged round the house and internetted for most of the day which was lovely. Once Mairead got home we were feeling fighting fit again and so headed off to see Snoqualmie Falls. The falls are actually higher (100ft higher) than Niagara Falls so they were pretty impressive to say the least. Also while there we got the rare opportunity to see a young Peregrine Falcon who had just left the nest - that was pretty cool!












On Tuesday we headed into town and wandered round Pike Place Market for the afternoon which was really nice and relaxing as there was tonnes of great window shopping to be done. Then to the highlight of our week....the Duck Dodge!
The Duck Dodge is a weekly sailing race on Lake Union (which incidentally is where the Sleepless in Seattle house boat lives - which we saw of course!).
Ang and I were pretty nervous about the whole thing as neither of us had ever even been on a boat before never mind helped with the crewing of it during a race! So yeap we had a baptism of fire with Captain Charles (a.k.a Ahab) and crew members Steven and Mairead trying to direct us in our duties onboard. Yeap...we had duties and we managed to carry them pretty well...so well in fact that we managed to come in in 11th place (out of 29) which was the same position they came in the previous race when there were no novices aboard...hooray for us! We must say that we absolutely loved the whole sailing thing and will happily volunteer on any boat that will have us from now on...hint hint. So following our success we headed to the pub to celebrate with dinner and drinks!

As Wednesday was our last evening we decided to cook dinner for our lovely host, when I say we it was mainly Ang who cooked and I kinda helped! The menu was Veggie lasagne and banoffee pie (yum yum) - apparently thats all Ang can cook! Following our yummy dinner we headed to the cinema to see a chick flick before having an early night ahead of our obscenely early start this morning.

So yeap we got up at 6.30am to head to the pub to watch Ghana triumph over the US. I have to say the early start was painful but the game was good and on the day the best team won. After the game we said our goodbyes and went to pick up our oh so beautiful convertible car...hee hee...

so now we're packing up and getting ready to hit the road on our month long road trip. While on the road web access may be scarce so apologies for long gaps in emails and blogging, we'll try our best to stay in touch as often as we can. Till next time! Bye!