In which Layla and Roz inadvertently attend a lesbian wedding and climb a mountain in heels

By Layla

Up bright and early - or rather dull-but-not-raining and early, we seized the importance of our last Seattle day by leaping up, dashing to Joe's for some breakfast granola (Roz) and oatmeal (me) - to counteract our days of decadent egg-and-avocado-based breakfasts of late - and dashed down the hill to catch a bus and deposit us by the water, where we caught the 11:20 ferry to Bainbridge Island. Taking ferries around the water surrounding Seattle, known as the Puget Sound, is a popular activity for Seattlites and tourists alike. We'd previously planned a 3 hour journey each way to the San Juan Islands, but as the wind picked up and the grey rain clouds mocked us, we thought 35 minutes was a better bet. And it was lovely - not only did we get to enjoy the Seattle skyline from the water and see various scenic views of island countryside, we also happened upon a lesbian wedding, and cheerily stood on the upper deck, teeth chattering, and watched them saying their vows and noting their goosebumps - a cardigan would not have gone amiss! 

When we got to the island, which was like a little 1960s seaside village, we walked down the quaint but unexciting high street, had a little browse in the quite extensive bookshop, and settled ourselves down for lunch at a cafe near the marina where we made up for our egg deficit and sampled the local Bainbridge beer while noting the clouds had burst during our meal and the rain was beating down steadily. It had settled to a sprinkle by the time we left in doomed pursuit of a 'Waterfront Path', but we did walk through some woods and eventually found our way back to the boat, just in time for its departure back to Seattle.

Back on dry land, we walked up a very steep hill with the aid of some salted caramel chocolates, and visited the library. Tis very impressive irregular glass building looks amazing from the outside, and while it was not quite as thrilling from the inside, we enjoyed a quick potter, before catching a bus to the Space Needle. This icon of Seattle was built for the world fair and was also the inspiration for the Jetsons' house (if you ever watched the cartoon, you'll have a vision). A pleasing lack of queues meant we zoomed straight to the top and had an unexpectedly lovely time strolling round the circular patio and taking in the views across the city, ocean, lake, and mountains (and rain clouds smiling benignly upon us - hooray!).

We took the bus home grudgingly back, then headed off on a half hour trek to Rover's, one of Seattle's very best restaurants which is sadly about to close down. Luckily we got in before it did, as the was a decadent and glorious vegetarian tasting menu with our name on it! We had a delicious and interesting meal with all sorts of impressive flavours and pretty presentations. Then, more than replete, we consulted Google Maps re our next destination. I'd planned a taxi but it was still early and my phone told me that a half hour stroll along Mercer Street would take us straight to our destination - the Harvard Exit Cinema for our final SIFF film. And so we set off. A few steps into our journey, we arrived at Mercer Street and started to laugh. Of all Seattle's impressively huge and steep hills, we had never yet encountered one like this. Stretching almost vertically into the sky, it looked like the sort of mountain you'd usually approach with ropes and crampons. Armed only with our little patent shoes (Roz's with a significant heel), we mounted the mountain. On and on we trekked, and every time we thought we were nearing the top, it turned out to be a momentary flat bit before an even steeper section. For the entire journey. By the time we popped out at Joe's for a sneaky pre-cinema glass of wine, we literally felt that we'd gone for a significant hike. But we'd probably worked off some of the courses of that tasting menu! 

The final film, Two Weddings and a Funeral, was a Korean gay sort-of-comedy and was interesting and obscure and quite good. It seemed a fitting end to our Seattle International Film Festival experience. We strolled home sadly, rather wishing it wasn't time for us to leave Seattle. At the start of our holiday we'd wanted to live there. The incessant rain that stops you doing most of the cool outdoor activities the city and environs has to offer (not to mention those terrifying hills and depressingly massive homeless population) has perhaps tempered our enthusiasm but we still loved the city, its coffee shops, its restaurants, its quirkiness, its local pride, its festivals, its scenery, its bike trails, its public transport, and its many variations on the egg and avocado dish. I hope we get to return soon. But now: on to New York!

In which Roz and Layla go underground, cycle and make a comedy organizer very happy

By Roz

After breakfast we headed - in the pouring rain - to the Elliot Bay bookstore.  It seems to be something of an institution in Seattle and was a fab place to browse for an hour or so, whilst I tried to persuade Layla to buy (and then carry) numerous books, mainly to little avail. Eventually we decided to head out and walk down to take an underground tour of Seattle. Though not generally a tour enthusiast, this one had been recommended by a couple of people and, we reasoned, it can't rain underground... We arrived slightly late, very damp and a bit flustered. And so I sent Layla in search of food (what could be better timing?!) whilst I nabbed us seats for the first part of the tour - a quick description of how and why Seattle had an underground. I subsequently regretted this, as time passed and I became anxious that she wouldn't be able to get in and I would end up doing the tour alone whilst she ate the food (I suspect that I shouldn't admit which aspect of this I found most worrying!). Still all was well, and I enjoyed my sandwich when Layla finally arrived. We were then divided into groups and Layla and I found ourselves with one of the perkiest human beings I have ever met: our tour guide. She had at least ten different synonyms for "awesome" which was just as well given how frequently this word needed to be deployed on the tour (a particular favourite was 'swanky'). Notwithstanding (or because of?) this, we enjoyed the tour immensely. It was fun to see how the city had been raised by 15-20 feet to reduce the recurrent flooding due to tides (though we couldn't help wondering why the city planners felt the need to preserve the mountain-like hills when they were doing this) and to wander along what had once been the sidewalk of the main street, and into what was originally the storefront of the bank and so forth - all now 15-20 feet under the current pavement. The tour guide did a nice job on the history of Seattle and all in all it was a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. 

We emerged from Seattle's underground (which had not been entirely free from damp) to find it was still raining. Disappointing. And so we headed through the international district (definitely less salubrious than it sounds!) to the Panama Hotel. The hotel became a local landmark a few years ago when the owner discovered in the basement the belongings of a number of Japanese families who'd lived in the area when Pearl Harbor was bombed. They had stored all their possessions there before being interned for the remaining duration of the war - and had never returned to get them.  Layla and I had read two books set in Seattle in preparation for our holiday - Where'd You Go, Bernadette? and The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. In fact, Layla read Bernadette on the plane, and devoured The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet in Arabica coffee only the previous day, as I speeded her along - because the eponymous hotel was just around the corner and I wanted her to be as keen as I was to visit. When I saw tears dripping down her cheeks, I knew it was time. The hotel still had a Japanese tearoom, where the characters drank tea in the book, and part of the teahouse has a glass floor, though which you can still see some of the unclaimed suitcases and furniture belonging to these evacuated Japanese families. Sad but interesting, and a funny experience to feel like we were almost in the book we'd both loved and wept over. Over a very large pot of peppermint tea and a slice of squash cake, we played Spanish scrabble in English. This is harder than it sounds (though Spanish scrabble in Spanish would be even harder for us!) since the balance of letters is wrong (I found it very disappointing to find myself with two of the letter "j" at one time - and they didn't even come with as many points as they do in the English scrabble). But fun. Layla won (annoying) so I made her hold the umbrella over me whilst we waited for a bus home.

We got changed and then headed out for an early evening film in a torrential downpour that rendered our trip home to change into drier clothes a tad pointless. For once, it wasn't a gay film (Seattle's International Film Festival seems to have a disproportionate number of gay films especially given that it has a gay film festival later on in the year - pleasing but curious) but instead was called A Lady in Paris. It was a relatively good film about an older Estonian lady who moves to - guess where?! - Paris and how she makes a life for herself. This was probably one of the better films we saw at the festival and we took ourselves from there to a nice Spanish restaurant called Tango, where we ate tapas very happily. We then headed back to the cocktail bar which we had been to on our first evening - Sun Liquor - for a gin cocktail or two. We walked home, bemoaning the lack of lovely cocktail bars near our flat in DC...or in Camberwell, now I come to think of it!

The next morning we both slept late, our bodies finally willing to concede we were in a different time zone and on holiday. Since it wasn't raining when we woke, and the forecast wasn't too bad, we decided to leap up and head to a place called Ballard where we'd heard we could hire bikes and go for a nice cycle. Our enthusiasm to get on with the day meant that we missed breakfast (to our consternation) and so by the time we were in Ballard we were more than eager for an early lunch. After a couple of false starts (the yelp reviews we had read on the bus had failed to mention an excess of neon in one establishment) we ended up in an organic cafe eating lentil soup and a sandwich, both of which were perfectly nice if not immensely exciting. We then headed to the bike rental place, kept our fingers crossed that the weather would stay acceptable, and hired two very pretty and good bikes and headed off onto a bike path, which quickly found Lake Union and then provided us with a lovely cycle along the water to begin with and then through a gas works park (nicer than it sounds!) and then through the countryside and then through the university. We spent much of the ride debating which story Layla should tell at a storytelling competition that she's competing in soon and having come to a satisfactory conclusion I felt pleased with myself (and Layla felt relieved the decision had been made). The weather stayed nice - and it even became sunny - so we went further than we intended (8 or so miles) before deciding to turn off the path to go down to the water. This was fun, even if we didn't enjoy climbing the hill back to the bike trail after. We then headed back to Ballard, delighting in the reasonable weather and the flat route. Having deposited our bikes back, it began to rain. We waited for a bus in a cafe attached to a gaming shop (Dungeons and Dragons kind of games) which was somewhat mad but quite fun and then hopped on to the bus to see a place called Fremont. For those of you not in the know, Fremont is the self-declared capital of the universe. In other words, it is a tad mad but quite jolly. We saw grass sculptures of dinosaurs, a 10ft iron sculpture of Lenin, a troll and other delights on a walking tour that Layla found in a guide book. 

We then hopped on another bus (Seattle has really good public transport!) and headed back into Seattle for an early evening dinner at a place called Lola's that had Mediterranean food (we had a lot of halloumi). We then headed over to a place called Rendezvous where I'd heard that there was promising-sounding comedy ("women focussed but not women exclusive"). When we went to buy our tickets, the ticket-seller (who turned out to be the organiser) asked us who we were here to support. Somewhat perplexed, we said that we were just visiting Seattle and had heard that there was comedy. The ticket-seller / organiser looked up at us with pure joy in her eyes and told us that we were the first people who'd come just for the sake of the comedy (and not to support a friend). She asked how we'd heard about the evening and I subsequently heard her telling two different sets of people, with some awe, that there were people there tonight who'd found out about it through googling "Seattle comedy". Resisting the urge to run, we settled down with a beer and a lot of curiosity about how bad the comedy would turn out to be. When the ticket seller came on stage to introduce the host, she referenced "the audience members who are here because they found us on the Internet" and this did nothing to dissipate our fear. But in fact, it turned out to be quite a good evening of stand-up - variable quality of performer, but that is almost always the case wherever you go, and each comedian was only on for two minutes. It was nice (or do I mean odd?!) to be hugged warmly by the ticket-seller / organizer when we finally left. It was certainly nice to know our presence had made someone's night. And so - when we found it was raining when we got outside - we treated ourselves to a cab home.

In which Layla and Roz visit the Emerald City and find coffee, cocktails and rain

By Layla

After our exotic Burma adventures, we were worried about appearing a bit prosaic... But the US is full of places people rave about, and one of those we hear most about is Seattle... And so, after a plane journey long enough to have practically deposited us in London, here we are in the Emerald City - the nickname for Seattle which is possibly bestowed due to the greenery - thanks to almost incessant rain.

A holiday in the west coast US equivalent of Glasgow? Risky, but if Frasier (beloved sitcom star of my youth) could love it, so could we! And having deposited our bags in a stylish and comfortable apartment in the heart of Capitol Hill (Greenwich Village-ish place - less cute, more cool, fewer tourists), we headed out to one of Seattle's impressive number of truly cool little bars. This one was called Sun Liquor and perched comfortably at the bar, as a lover of cocktails and the slowest drinker in the world, I was particularly delighted to find gin cocktail flights! We both opted for this and as we sat sipping them and loving the ambience of this place (which actually makes its own gin, called Hedge Trimmer Gin, we were impressed that we had boarded the plane only after work that day and were now officially on holiday, far far away, that same evening. Hooray for time differences!

We arose on Saturday and headed straight to Vivace to let Roz experience her first (of many) Seattle coffee, then went for brunch in a cool venue called Americana where we enjoyed combinations of eggs, avocado, and salsa. Delicious. Part of our reason for being in Seattle was SIFF, the Seattle International Film Festival, and we had our first movie booked at the nearby Harvard Exit Cinema at 11am. Still early due to jetlag, we bought more coffee from another cool cafe (Roy's, perhaps) and headed off for a walk round a nice nearby park, where we circumnavigated locals doing various exercises, before grabbing some popcorn and settling down for The Geography Club, a not amazing but very enjoyable film about gay teens. Very satisfactory.

After the film, we grabbed a quick sandwich (Roz)/crepe (me) for lunch at Joe's cafe across the street, then walked down to a bike tour place. Delightfully it wasn't raining - in fact it was almost sunny - and we had a 2 1/2 hour cycle tour of downtown Seattle. We went past various cool sites, like the amazing glass public library, Chinatown, Pioneer Square (which doubles as the historic centre of town and the epicenter of homelessness), and then along the waterfront, up past the Space Needle, and back. Quite interesting, though the rain did start to splatter towards the end and we were glad to spot a bus bound straight for our house. A quick change of clothes and a hop onto yet another bus, and we were deposited in Queen Anne, the district that is home to the SIFF Uptown cinema. We had an early dinner in a well reviewed and very pleasant Indian restaurant called Roti, right across from the cinema, then joined the queue for the completely sold out The Way Way Back, a film about a family which was not especially interesting (for either of us) but very well done, and then retired to the after party at a nearby venue. However, after a couple of glasses of champagne it was beginning to feel a bit too much like a work drinks reception, so we skipped out and headed for a very cool speakeasy Roz had read about, the Knee High Stocking Company. We walked right through a giant folk festival (which weirdly, at 9pm, had finished and everyone had gone home to bed - our kind of music person!), past the space needle, and then, after our bus didn't come, on and on for half an hour up a big hill til we got there at last and found they were full.

A small amount of angst later, we relocated to a very nice bar, Tavern Law, where we sipped cocktails and eyed the little black phone that people were quietly using - the entry to a speakeasy above the restaurant called Needle and Thread. We glanced at each other, then I went for it - and they fit us in! Soon we were perched high above the loud, busy bar in a serene, 20s-style, comfortable bar and sipping excellent cocktails - and feeling very cheery and smug. And it was a mere 10 minute walk home. A successful first day in Seattle. Impressions: rain, hills, quirk, people not using umbrellas, lots of people with tattoos and pink hair, lots of homelessness, everyone in bed by 9pm, numerous fabulous coffee shops and genuinely cool bars, and a very fun film festival. And we wouldn't mind living here at all...

The next day with rain sprinkling down, I was despatched to buy the coffee and bring it home. But then we did venture out, to Arabica - another cool coffee shop and brunch venue, where I got obsessed with a book, The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, set in Seattle, and made us stay there til ridiculously late, but we hopped on a bus and were on time to see a rather depressing Israel/Palestine gay film called Out in the Dark at SIFF Uptown. Afterwards, feeling a little dreary, we stocked up with ice cream, and walked through the ongoing folk festival - hippy-tastic! And to this weird new museum under the space needle by an artist called Chihuly - a glass blower who has made all these massive, amazing, colorful glass sculptures, including those planted in a weird, surreal, Alice-In-Wonderland style garden. It was quirky and cool and pleasing. Afterwards we went to a second hand book shop called Mercer Books and bought a couple of books, then had another coffee (when in Seattle...) and returned to the cinema, this time for 6 gay-themed short films, many of which we really enjoyed.

Bus success this time saved us from another 2 mile hike and we settled down in the excellent Lebanese restaurant ManMoom where we indulged in halloumi, wine from the winery we visited in Lebanon, and other delights... Then popped round the corner where, smugly holding our reservation, we were at last granted access to the coveted Knee High Stocking Company. Which was cool and fun and nice, and we had a couple of cocktails til a wave of exhaustion hit me and Roz impressively put us on a bus home. Public transport is very convenient here!

And so here we are on Monday morning, branching on avocado and eggs and planning the day ahead. It is tricky when there's so much to do in Seattle that's outside and there's this unpleasant drizzle. But this is such a cool, stylish, laid back, funky city. We will be fine!