Seattle – Day 6

I awoke surprisingly early this morning – 9:00. I was hungry and thirsty so I got up for breakfast.

Having eaten some toast I found Andrew entering the lounge area and he suggested getting a decent coffee, so we trotted across the road for a container of Seattle’s Best. We sat about chatting for a bit and then Andrew realised he would have to get his act together in order to get to Vancouver today. He is going up by Greyhound to spend a few days with a mate of his. I said farewell to Andrew and wished him “happy trails”. He would be missed.

I went back over the road for another caffeine fix and the girl behind the counter asked me what I wanted and then said “its Phil right?” – Oh dear, they had got to know me.
Having consumed my refill I had a sort out of all my stuff – creating a small mound of laundry – and then got showered & changed. The laundry will go on tonight, so in the meantime I got another refill and sat down to catch up with the last few days’ blog entries. I also checked my emails and had one from Chris suggesting a meet-up tomorrow. I replied straight away accepting, it will be good to hear what happened to the van on the road trip as well as the other adventures we would have had since Vancouver – over a month ago!

I was sitting at the laptop typing up this blog entry when this voice said “Hiya Phil, how are you going?” and I looked up to see Charlie standing there. We promptly engaged in conversation getting mutual updates on our respective travels and future plans. We also compared notes on the Rugby World Cup final which Charlie managed to see live. I told him my tale of woe for which he was most sympathetic. We also agreed on the poor standard of refereeing displayed by the officials – I have seen better standards in Six Nations matches.

Charlie then went off to get his stuff deposited in his room and sorted out while I carried on getting this typed up. We met up later to go and get something to eat and settled on trying the Indian restaurant on 3rd Avenue. The meal was very nice. One also has to realise that Indian and Chinese meals here are different to similar ones in the UK. They definitely have more sugar in them and are prone to pamper the very sweet palates Americans seem to have. A good example of this is the coffee shop over the road which has a disgustingly large array of scones, cookies, cakes and pastries all loaded with cream, icing, sugar and more sugar. Being a “savoury person” these have little interest for me. The onion bargee I got was a bunch of onion rings coated in “bargee batter” and fried – they were nice though.

Having finished eating we stopped at the take-out on the way back and got some beers. We returned to the hostel and assumed the relaxed position in the smoking room. Andy came in and joined us followed by Mike, Miguel and the Professor. We got chatting and laughing as usual and the time evaporated. Charlie & I bashed the pinball machine a bit and then he decided to turn in for the night. I was going to follow him after finishing my beer but got talking to Mark. We ended up consuming a few more beers as Mark had some different variety of the beer I was drinking (if I remember to look next time I can supply the name – Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve) so I had to try one of those – the Professor insisted! We had a great laugh as this guy had a wonderful dry understated sense of humour. Although I had chatted with him last night I hadn’t had a real one-to-one with him until now. He was a bloody interesting bloke and I can see why Andrew had said to me “have a talk with the Professor, he is a real nice interesting guy” he was quite right. We had a great laugh exchanging ideas and opinions. At one stage I finished one of my diatribes about the Americans and said “In your Professorial opinion; am I being too cynical?” to which the Professor smiled, laughed and said “Yes, I think you are being too cynical... but not much.” He has travelled around more of America than I have and came to the conclusion that, if one stuck to the cities as one travelled around it, one could tire of America. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what he meant, but will see more of it before I reach any conclusions.

We eventually finished our beers and headed for a lie down. Mark was leaving tomorrow for Portland, which seems to be a popular destination from here, by train so would be gone by 8:30 in the morning. We said our farewells and how nice it was to have met each other, which certainly wasn’t bullshit on my part – he was a real nice unassuming guy.

So much for the early night, but it was earlier in the morning than the one before!