Seattle - wrapping up the last week or so

I am sitting in Idaho after a longish drive from Seattle, and I realize that I have been a bit remiss in posting lately. Life got in the way.

So to sum up:

• Seattle Aquarium was well worth a visit - well laid out in a lovely building down by the waterside - not as spectacular as Monterey but also not nearly as crowded. Girls particularly loved the otters, the seals and the tropical fish.
• We had a great weekend catching up with friends, Matt and Vee, and their two small and enthusiastic boys. I hadn't seen Matt and Vee since 2007 in which time they had produced said small boys and moved from Singapore to Canada. We went on the Monorail (which induced incredible levels of excitement), walked around town, ate fish and chips, and on day 2 went to the Zoo. I am ambivalent about zoos but the Woodland Park Zoo is very well laid out, and there are few activities nicer than hanging out with excited kids looking at amazing animals. The bears were particularly wonderful as we could get right next to them, in their pool, looking through glass. 
• Then there was the Museum of Flight - which was fantastic, world class. It's huge covering everything from the science of flight, early planes, the history of Boeing, space exploration, and World Wars 1 and 2, not forgetting a Concorde and an old Air Force One (Millie liked that one, with the bed and all). I particularly loved the docents at the museum - elderly men with bags of experience, knowledge and best of all enthusiasm who would turn up and ask the girls "have you seen a Sputnik?" or "which is your favourite planet" and then lead them off to explore something. We spent over 4 hours there and I eventually had to give up as my brain was mush - so the history of Boeing was rather overlooked. 
• Swimming! The girls had 6 half hour lessons with Tiarra at the Meredith Mathews Y and while they aren't quite swimming yet, their confidence and happiness levels have increased enormously. I was amazed to see the girls swim off down to the deep end (with floats on) and then to see Lottie jump in. 

All in all Seattle was a great place to stay a while and I could easily imagine it's a lovely place to live. A bit cold and wet after San Francisco (not thinking about the climate in Wales, lalalalalala) but beautifully green and lush too. It's similarly liberal, perhaps less intense, less upmarket, certainly less expensive. 

Anyway, here's some pictures from the last week. 

International Fountain near the Space Needle

Woodland Park Zoo

Museum of Flight

A walk through Seattle's International District

Yesterday the weather was sunny and windy and the girls and I took advantage by wandering down 16th Avenue and on towards the International District - heart of the Asian community in Seattle. I say Asian and International because this isn't just Seattle's Chinatown. Many communities from Asia have settled in this area which straddles the freeway around Jackson Street - or should I say the freeway cuts through the middle - more on that later.

At Rainier and Jackson you cross into "Little Saigon" where the relatively recently arrived Vietnamese community has set up many businesses. You also pass a sign recording the jazz scene of the 50s and 60s in this area - a place that saw the careers of Ray Charles and Quincy Jones begin. Under the freeway with its painted pillars in red and yellow you get into the heart of the area. We turned towards the Wing Luke Museum and what a treasure we found.

The Wing Luke Museum has been in existence since the late 60s honouring the local Chinese-born politician who died young in a plane crash in 1965. Over the last 40 or so years, the museum has expanded its original remit to include all the Asian communities that have made their homes in the North West. A few years ago, the museum moved into a large brick building which has been completely reconfigured very stylishly into a museum space. It's one of those modern museums which has more pictures and words than artifacts but the treasures at the heart of it are the preserved parts of the building which you can only access as part of a tour.

Our tour was led by one of the mayor of San Francisco's relatives (!), Don a charming, interesting and informative guide. Don explained about the location of the International District and how it had been transformed when hills were demolished to build out into the Puget Sound. In this part of town, 6th Avenue used to form the waterfront. He also told us how when the freeway was built in 1964, bisecting the area, it destroyed many local businesses and caused an economic downturn in the community that lasted many years.

We visited a shop on the ground floor which was moved into the space lock stock and barrel. And then we were taken upstairs to the old hotel that existed for many decades on the top floor. This was a SRO hotel - cheap rooms at 25c a night in 1910. Rooms for men from Asia, far from home and their families, looking to make new and better lives and escape old ones. It's a fascinating space and the museum have done a great job of not over engineering or tidying it up. We wandered the corridors visiting rooms including a long and ornately decorated family association meeting room and a bedroom. For me this was the highlight of the tour. We were tantalisingly told of the building next door which is similar from outside but apparently was the site of many gambling and opium dens and therefore has trapdoors and secret corridors and staircases for quick escapes from the police.

We visited the museum main exhibits after the tour learning about the treatment of the Japanese during the war, of the 1795 Act which removed citizenship from all non-whites, of the many other communities from the Philippines to Cambodia and including a striking picture of Sikhs working on a railway in Oregon in 1909.

By this time, we were all a bit peckish so we headed off for noodle soup at Mike's. Very good and cheap and busy. And then a bit of a potter in Kinokuniya bookshop, a look at the new gateway to Chinatown on 5th, and homeward.

Settling into Seattle

We're coming up to the end of our third week in Seattle. And I like it. The weather and plants and trees remind me of the UK. In other words it is wet and changeable but also green green green after California with a glorious Spring of cherry blossom and tulips and hellebores and daffodils and bluebells everywhere. I could see how living here would be easy. We're staying just on the south-eastern edge of Capitol Hill in a neighbourhood of small houses with their own gardens. It's slightly suburban feeling after SF but also walkable to shops and restaurants, though I do miss corner stores. We are practically living in Trader Joe's a few blocks away as it and an overpriced coop next door are pretty much it for food shopping (shout out for SF and 26th and Guerrero, and Valencia Farmers Market and Casa Guadalupe!). I also miss the diversity. It could be the neighbourhood we're staying in but I'm not sure. Neighbourhoods don't feel as distinct from each other as they do in SF and I haven't yet seen anywhere as vibrant as the Mission or as intriguing as Chinatown or parts of Richmond and the Sunset.

I shouldn't be comparing but I've realised that every city we visit is going to be compared to San Francisco.

So another thing. Town planning. What were Portland and Seattle thinking when they ploughed through their central neighbourhoods to put in a ring of freeway around their downtown areas? They are like canyons in some cases, creating a barrier of noise and pollution that feels hard to cross on foot. And in Seattle I was really disappointed to find that Pike's market's open space looks over the freeway rather than the waterfront. All you can hear is noisy trucks and cars whizzing past. The actual waterfront feels so far away. What was interesting to learn is that it wasn't always this way - up the top of the water tower in Volunteer Park is a display of the history of the open spaces in Seattle and the influence of the Olmsteds. Frederick Law Olmsted and his sons had an extraordinary impact on the landscape of so many American cities and the firm designed the park system in Seattle. They were also central to the development of the National Parks in the US. Here in Seattle their firm took over some original plans for the parks which included many miles of cycle paths and expanded them over the whole city. And then the car came and in the sixties despite much local objection, the city ploughed through the middle of their city to create people-unfriendly canyons and noisy barriers. They even knocked down Seattle's oldest public building in the process.

So well done SF for knocking down your Embarcadero freeway after the 1989 earthquake and reclaiming the waterfront for the people. Of course the fact you put it up in the first place shows you weren't immune to America's car worship.

Week one in Seattle

We've been here a week now. We are staying east of Seattle University and just southish of Capitol Hill. It's quiet, green, tree-lined, close to restaurants and coffee shops and Trader Joe's. Tom is working during the week from the apartment and the girls and I are exploring, and doing a little school work. To be honest the girls are rather diffident about the exploration - takes a big effort to get them dressed and out though I think they are enjoying it once they are out.

So far we've visited the Children's Museum at Seattle Center (museum better for younger kids, Space Needle and Monorail - cool), Pike's Market (very touristy, some good food stalls and a lot of not very good craft stalls), the two local parks (Cal Anderson and Volunteer), and yesterday we headed off to see the Gauguin exhibition at Seattle Art Museum. The last was stunning - the focus was on Gauguin's work in the context of native Polynesian art so there were many gorgeous artifacts together with his paintings, drawings and woodcuts. Not sure what the girls thought. They liked the audio commentary which may have been enlightening them but was certainly keeping them occupied.

And now it's raining. A day to use the car, and shop for rain gear and food and potter about.

For girls' point of view - see their blog Across America with Millie and Lottie