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.