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Sep 29, 2003

Woody Allen's Anything Else 


After a long time saw a movie at the theatre, it was Woody Allen's "Anything Else", on this Saturday. Typical Woody Allen fare and for those who like his movies (you don't really have to like the person to like his movies, right?!??), this one is also abrim with dry wit and sarcastic self mocking humor and it has fresh faces - Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci in addition to the master, Mr. Allen himself.

In the movie, Jason Biggs is a comedy writer, so is Allen, but the major difference between the two in addition to Woody Allen's off the cuff funny philospohical nuances is that Biggs is a person who can't say No to most people, including his agent and his new-age girl friend played by Ricci. Allen's character takes upon himself to re-invent Biggs, and thus the movie goes. Set in Newyork (where else?) the movie winds its way thru' Central Park, Manhattan and the lives of its protagonists. Its not a movie where you'd fall off your chair laughing your heads off, but its the one with a lot of 'thinker's jokes'. Well in short if you like Woody Allen movies, you'll definitely like this one.

Sep 14, 2003


The Road Trip - Part 9 - SF Bay Area, Fremont ,Gilroy and back to Anchorage 

Both yesterday and today were spent rushing about, catching up with old friends, eating heavy dinners, doing a year's worth of shopping at Gilroy factory outlet and Fremont and generally being in the 'farewell-time-soon' mood. Today evening(14th Sept) we took a flight out of SFO to Anchorage with a two hour stop over at Portland. We were home at midnight and that winds up this travelogue.


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Sep 12, 2003


The Road Trip - Part 9(California) - Sacramento, Again! 

We woke up at around noon, and headed straight to Sacramento to be at our friend's place in Folsom. The day passed with meeting and visiting a few friends at their homes and finally crashing at one of their houses.Not much sight seeing for the day.

Sep 11, 2003


The Road Trip - Part 8(California) - Napa Valley 

The day started off with us heading to Ghirardeli, America's oldest chocolate company and the creators of the legendary Ghirardelli chocolate. Across the Maritime Museum, where the Hyde Street ends, Ghirardelli is a must stop for those who are visiting San Francisco for the first time, we were going there to stock up our pantry with their famous chocolates and cocoa. Yes, today is the "stocking'-up day". Half an hour at Ghirardelli and we are off to the vineyards of Napa Valley.

I used to play a PC game, called Road Rash while I was in college, it had a couple of circuits(race tracks) which you could choose like Pacific Coast Highway, Napa Valley (these are the ones I remember) while playing a game. At that time all I knew was these were in USA but I had no clue as to whether they bore any resemblance to the real Pacific Coast US 101 or Napa Valley. Driving to Napa Valley was like playing Road Rash all over again, there were the vineyards fleeing past, two lane highway which meandered down to one lane at parts, if I remember right Napa Valley course was one of the easier courses, so the one I played more often than others, see that training has come handy.

This was not my first trip to Napa-Sonoma valley, I made one a year and half ago and fell in love with the place. Like the farms of Oregon, here again was people leading a different kinda life, so close to the city, yet so faraway. Most of the wineries in US are along the Napa-Sonoma valley, big names like Robert Mondavi, V Sattui etc dominate the region. We were heading for V Sattui winery to replenish our stock of wines. You can have free wine tasting at all the wineries, there is a wine train that'll take you across the area and some 'hardy' wine drinkers make it a day of living solely on wine hopping from winery to winery.

V.Sattui is real nice picnic spot as well as a great winery. I would recommend their Madeira and other dessert wines. You can grab a bottle of wine, find something at their fabulous deli (thats what we did) and have a lazy afternoon in the shade of Sattui's hundred year old oak trees in their two acre picnic yard. Back to San Francisco after a minor tire repair to take out a nail embedded in the tire and that wound up our day.


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Sep 10, 2003


The Road Trip - Part 7(California) - San Francisco 


Finally we reached back our old home - San Francisco, on the evening of September 10, Wednesday. The drive back from LA to SF was pretty uneventful except for the fact that it ate up most of Wednesday. We reached SF downtown by evening, after leaving LA at 12pm.

We used to live in the Bay Area before we moved to the Artic Circle. San Francisco is still the same sweet fog city, so different and pleasant from the rest of the desert style environs of California which surrounds it. It doesn't have the highly-irrigated-false-greenery -covering-over-the-real-desert look of Sacramento or Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area is a class apart, having a micro climate of its own. For the two days we were there we stayed at a friend's place in downtown SF.

I don't feel like writing much about San Francisco in a touristy way because it had been home for some time and we used to show our friends around the city whenever they visited us. This was the first time that the roles were reversed. Having endured the boredom of visiting and revisiting the famous tourist spots like Fisherman Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the day ended with us deciding just to visit Ghirardeli the next day to get some of their famous chocolate and nowhere else in the city.


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The Road Trip - Part 7(California) - Los Angeles & Hollywood  


A lazy morning of lounging around found us all heading fordowntown LA, Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood. We drove thru' historic downtown LA, along Broadway, flanked by 1920-30ish buildings, mostly in brick. Then we took a u-turn back to the New Downtown, Fashion District and South Park which is a world away, architecturally, from the old downtown area. One thing that struck me, was LA seemed like a true Hispanic city, or was it roads we took, whatever it was there were more brown faces than faces of any other color.

Inspite of visitng LA 3 times or so in the past two years, I had never seen Hollywood or Sunset Boulevard before and had high expectations. As we got off the exit from 101 and hit Sunset Blvd, it seemed to me like any other road in urban America, maybe I didn't have enough associations I could remember except the name. We did get the Hollywood sign in the camera and palm trees on the Blvd, but other than that it was just another LA street.

Sunset Boulevard became Sunset Strip while going towards Beverly Hills and Bel Air. Click here if you want to know more about Sunset Boulevard and other Hollywood streets. About Hollywood and Bel Air, not up to my expectations (that meant they were too high or my imagination required a 'grounding' real soon), maybe the hour and the light played a part in my perceptions. Sun had almost gone down and it was kinda dark, and all I saw was ivy covered walls or watchman's tiny cubicles standing outside the gates,forlornly in the night and above all it was just a winding one lane highway (did you expect Hollywood starlets to build a mansion beside I-5, in all that noise, traffic, pollution and people?. My mistake!) The houses, or the part of them which were visible above the walls of the properties, looked comparitively big, very much like the Gulf boom bungalows back in my native place in another continent far away. But I guess its the real estate thats pricey in Bel Air and Hollywood, you can have the house and property of the same size somewhere in Montana and pay not even 0.001% of what you would have paid in Hollywood (you wish!).



Sep 8, 2003


The Road Trip - Part 6(California) - Sacramento and Los Angeles  



Reached Sacramento on Sunday night. After dinner at a friend's house in Sacramento, N had this fabulous idea, a very 'road-tripsy' one, that we should drive full eight hours to LA that night itself. The thought, that during this road trip, we hadnot driven a lot at a stretch, might have held N back from calling this a real road trip, but not me. The idea of driving high on caffeine, through comparatively less crowded highways at night was something that had evaded us till now. Then why wait, I agreed to N's suggestion.

Four hours later,after I had slept thru' the caffeine, most part of I-5 between Sacramento and LA and a better part of the night, I woke myself to what seemed to be a phantasma of a 'driven' man at the wheel, driving at 85 miles an hour, just short of downtown LA by little less than hundred miles. We reached LA around 4-4.30AM. After a year and a half of leading a detached- from- the- rest- of- the- world Arctic life, LA was an eye opener. Ok, Seattle traffic was bad, but at 0400am in LA everyone was at everyone else's necks racing on to reach their work places. At this hour in the morning, I usually had full 4 hours of sleep ahead and lot more sweet dreams in line. Luckily, two people in the car meant that we had a slight advantage over most of the other drivers, we could use the car pool lane, that was moving faster. Everybody was doing 75-80 mph over a 55 mph speed zone, car poolers were touching 85 mph, not bad for a Monday morning.

We reached our destination at Irvine at 0630am. The rest of the day passed in a sleepy haze punctuated by intermittent brunch and snacks offered by our gracious hosts. By evening we were up and ready to go, this time towards San Diego. The southern most (big)city on the West Coast on USA, San Diego is almost next door to Mexico. One of the funny warning signs on the higway towards San Diego is the highway warning signs which depicts a few fleeing human forms, just like somewhere else where it'd be a person riding horse which alerts you to look out for horse riders, this sign alerts you to look out for illegal immigrants fleeing across the border and stumbling(?) blind across highways. There is a check post near San Diego on I-5, where they are supposed to check vehicles for illegal immigrants, some of whom are smuggled across squeezed inside the dashboard of cars or sewn into the seats, I wonder how they ever find out which car to check for?

We did a lightning visit to one of our friends' house in San Diego and returned the same night to Irvine, LA. We decided to extend our stay in LA by one more day, which meant we had a full day tomorrow in LA. See you then.


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Sep 7, 2003


The Road Trip - Part 5(Oregon) - Crater Lake and Klamath Falls  


Left Medford at 1130am heading east on 62, towards Crater Lake National Park. The day was a little chilly and road ahead as we neared Crater Lake was draped in slight fog. This route was called Rogue - Umpqua Scenic byway between Rogue and Umpqua rivers. On the way there were trail heads leading to Rogue River lookout points, we ended up going a little way up the trail and clicking a few photographs from river's edge.

Crater Lake is the deep blue clear water lake formed by the collapse of Mount Mazama, so it looks as if some has dug out a bowl shaped lake at the summit of a mountain. If you plan to hike there are 90 miles of trails around the lake and several campgrounds and you can also have a boat ride in the lake. The lake's annual input comes mostly from precipitation and the lake is surrounded by 200 feet mountain cliffs on all sides. Those who want to take in the full beauty of Crater lake should attempt the Rim Drive, which is drive around the rim of the lake(of course!), with several viewpoints along the way. We did a 1/3rd rim drive and turned back, shot some usual tourist videos and headed back on 62 towards Klamath Falls and from there on to California.

Before you go, all you riding behemoth gas guzzlers, fill up your tanks before you cross into California, gas prices increase by a full fifty cents or more when you just 1 mile across Oregon border into California.


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The Road Trip - Part 4 - US 101 Oregon Coast
 



I wonder who made hotel checking-outs at 11am a standard, whoever it was, I guess it had to be a late riser. I mean if early birds had their way, as with the worm they'd rather make it 6am or something. Well 11am suited us fine, not too early, not too late (we could have easily slept for one more hour, that was not actually needed, if not the for the check out time being strictly at 11am) Started from Red Apple at eleven, took US 101 heading south along the Oregon coastline. Alright, we were finally on the famed 101, touted to be one of the most scenic highways in the US. We had driven on 101 along the California coast, including the 17 mile drive some time back, the Oregon coast was supposed to be as beautiful or better than the California one, let's see. The day was a bit cloudy, and there was a slight drizzle when we started from Tillamook. Somebody later told us that we should have gone to Tillamook Cheese Factory that was really famous, although at that time all we had in mind was to get out of Tillamook as quick as possible and do some real driving along the scenic 101.

The section US 101 scenic byway after Tillamook towards South is christened the Three Capes Route. We got off at Cape Kiwanda, a few miles down south, it had a nice beach, a huge rock in the middle of the ocean not far from the beach and a sand hill towards the northern edge filled with 'sand-surfers'. Even for an overcast day Kiwanda was kinda crowded, kite flyers, people riding horses along the beach, sand surfers, kids at play and lazy loungers - there was everyone there. You could drive down to the beach and park on the southern side or drive as far South along the beach as far as your vehicle can take it. It was a long time since we did any drive-in beaches and this seemed to be a good chance, we eased our car down the slope to the beach and veered right towards the sand hill. We might have gone a few meters when we saw a magnificient display of festival lights in our rear view mirror and it turned out that we have somehow become the 'object of affection' of the local sheriff. It was his truck bearing down at us with dazzling display of lights and warning sounds. Hey, what was this? What did we do? We didn't have to wait much longer to find out the answer, there he was, right beside the driver side window, asking N to roll down the window. "I tried to warn you twice, but seemed like you didn't want to hear, your driving license and registration, please," demanded the Sheriff. After taking a look at N's driving license, he joked, "hopefully you are not 'wanted' for anything in Alaska and do drive on the left side of the beach, not the right." and let us go. That was our initiation into "unwritten codes of conduct on US 101 beaches."

From Kiwanda we followed 101 south towards Lincoln City. It appeared that Lincoln City catered more to the tourists than Tillamook with its wider choice of hotels, restaurants and fancy shops along the seafront. One thing I noted about the Oregon coast was that it had more rocks in the sea than any other sea coast I have ever been to. Not just by the beach, you can see rocks, big ones at that jutting out from the ocean bed, quite faraway from land, but the beach itself is not rocky as one'd expect. Driving down to Newport we chanced upon one of Oregon's renowned lighthouses and a historical landmark, the lighthouse at Yaquina Head. The entrance fee is $5 per car and is valid for 3 days. Yaquina Head lighthouse, considered to be one of the most beautiful lighthouses in US was built in 1873. Tourists are allowed to climb upto the top of the lighthouse, one at a time. Yaquina Head Natural Area also encloses Cobble Beach, Quarry Cove Tidal Pools which are outstanding natural habitats for various marine and land organisms and a few trails which takes you up the hills overlooking the lighthouse.

After Newport road curves up along the edge of Siuslaw National Forest and beyond. On the way we took a short break to photograph another light house, Hecata Head. Passing the Central Oregon coast near Reedsport, we saw sand dunes on our right, so this was Dunes, Or. Its a wonder that these sand dunes exist in the middle of nowhere, without any connection to the preceeding or succeeding landscape. Along the road there was a thin curtain of coniferous trees and beyond that you could see the sand dunes, I mean how could you be in a temperate coniferous forest and in a desert at the same time. That was Dunes, Or - a natural paradox. Trees grow on its sides , water runs thru' it, locals make a living out of it renting ATVs to tackle the dunes to the more adventurous tourists. and people adventurous but short of time just pass through, staring hard at the passing scenery from the comfort of their air condioned vehicles and making a note of what to write in their journals, like I did.

We left 101 for Highway 38 which was named Umpqua Scenic Corridor, after the Umpqua river that drains along the Central Oregon basin. There were several spots at the start of this highway called Elk viewing spots, where you could watch herds of Elks roaming at a comfortable distance without any fear of humans. This part of the highway was really scenic and so was Highway 138 we merged onto on our way to I-5, which we hoped to catch at Sutherlin. The area was charecterized by rolling grass lands, interspersed with patches of woods, then fields stretching afar. There were farms all kinds, diary farms, wheat fields, horses, all in all a real rustic stretch of land where you could live forever immersed in sowing seeds, harvesting grain, rearing cows and horses and yet know nothing about the outside world, except for the occasional automobile that passes by raising dust on the highway at the far side of your property.

We got on to I-5 at Southerlin, heading South towards Medford, Or, our stop for the night. The stretch of I-5 from Roseburg to Medford climbs up along the mountains reaching Grants Pass at 2020 ft then weaves down towards Medford. We decided to stop at Medford as we had plans of visiting Crater Lake National Park the next day, which was 80 miles east of Medford. A piece of advice on the hotels in Medford, those along 62E towards Crater Lake are expensive since this is the expected tourist route and tourists seldom venture off their pre-chartered routes. But if you are looking for cheaper but decent accomodation try hotels and inn in or around downtown Medford along I-5. We stayed at Medford Inn at $50 a night on the 1st Ave, it was one of the best hotel rooms we had during this trip, whereas the cheapest accomodation along 62E started at $75. That winded up our last night in last night in Oregon

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Sep 5, 2003


The Road Trip - Part 3(Oregon) Portland and Tillamook
 



We were supposed to have an early start today. But after an hour at Kinkos getting the laptop hooked up, to download and print our car insurance papers, then some more maps, then a small shopping for road trip supplies at Kmart at Everett Mall we were finally off to Portland, 200 miles of south of Seattle, at 1pm. Well, for some people day begins at noon. Drive to Portland on I-5 was uneventful, we reached downtown Portland at 4 pm. Parked on the curbside of 'South Park Blocks', which is the area in downtown Portland canopied by hundred year old elm trees.

Portland seems to be a big city with small town charm and plenty of greenery, it'd fit snugly into the term 'beautiful city'. Most of the city blocks are half the size of ordinary city blocks, planning and the layout of streets & blocks are pedestrian friendly, so are the street cars. We didn't have much time to spend in Portland as we were planning to hit the Oregon coast, ie US Highway 101 tonight itself. The shortage of time made us forgo a visit to Tim McCall Waterfront Park, and we headed towards the west of the city, across the Willamatte river to Washington Park, home of Rose Test Gardens, Hoyt's Arboretum, Zoo and Japanese Garden.


It was a surprise to see quaint old fashioned residences inside Washington park, you wouldn't believe that people lived, raised families and went to work, living in such houses that looked liked gingerbread houses, Irish castles built in granite, fairytale homes in white and red, but they did, in Washington park. Inside the park most of the drive was along the curving road within Hoyt's Arboretum which housed trees from all over the world. One end of the arboretum is Portland zoo and the other end is the Rose Test Gardens and the Japanese Garden. As luck would have it, Japanese Garden closed a few minutes before we reached its entrance gate.The brighter side of it is that it offered a good climb up the hill and thus woke up our lazy bones.Hihi. Rose Test Gardens was just nextdoor, their layout and landscaping reminded me of the Mughal Gardens in Northern India, Pakistan and Afganistan, except that Roes Test Gardens were confined to roses whereas the Mughal gardens were not. Laid out in terraces, interspersed with fountains, alcoves and pavilions, I could have been in a Mughal garden somewhere in Kashmir or Himachal.

Drove back to downtown Portland, going around a bit and then headed west on Interstate 26 towards Oregon coast, towards our destination for the night, Tillamook. While driving towards Tillamook I realised that US 26 was pretty dark compared to the other bigger highways we had driven on and not being in an expert in tackling a lethal combination of extreme curves and pitch black darkness, I passed the wheel to N, who takes on the persona of a race car driver under such circumstances. Well, we didn't get any speeding tickets that night and reached safely at Tillamook at 11pm. We did a market survey of accommodations available (Best Western - 80$, Western Royal Inn - 64$, only smoking rooms available Red Apple Inn- not a hotel chain, but 60$ only) and decided to crash at Red Apple Inn. Though it was not a real looker, Red Apple had a TV that looked ancient, but worked perfectly well and a microwave that looked like a cabinet (worked perfectly well too), in addition to the usual room accessories. Not bad for sixty dollars. Our first night in Oregon.



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The Road Trip - Part 2(Washington) Boeing Factory & Seattle
 



That was a looong night...slept for around 12 hours, catching up with all the sleep lost. Reached Boeing factory at 1130am and got tickets for the 1pm tour, five bucks each. The guy at the Boeing counter directed us to a place he called the "Waterfront", and gave us a route map for the same, for us to spend the interim time. The so called Waterfront is at Mukilteo, there is a ferry terminal and a waterfront esplanade cum road with some restaurants and cafes. If you have time (we didn't) Mukilteo is an interesting beach front community to explore. After grabbing a quick bite we promptly reported back at the Boeing Tour Center at 1pm.

Boeing Tour (<< a must do) is worth the five bucks they charge and much, much more. They have six tour timings during the day and most of them are packed, takes up all the seats of the bus they use to take people around the factory. It starts with a 12 minute video on Boeing's history and manufacturing process, this is also the time you can utilize to go to the restroom or keep your belongings in your car since you are not supposed to take personal items during the tour and nor are there any rest stops during the hour long tour of the factory.

First they take you to the main building, which by its volume, and footprint is largest building in the world. It is divided into separate areas, one after the other, for the manufacturing and assembly of Boeings 747, 767, 777 etc etc. You are shown the assembly process of a 747, which you can watch at a safe but viewable distance from the overhanging walkways. There is a huge barrage of information you could accumulate during the tour, the kind you could impress your friends with, during light-hearted dinner chit-chat like, "do you know Boeing Factory covers 98.3 acres under one roof?" or "do you know Boeing 777 is the first airplane designed full on computer?" Well, if you want to know more about Boeing or Boeing Factory Tours. Click here

After the Boeing rendezvous, we drove back to Seattle. My research on Seattle prior to this visit had enlightened me the fact that the new Seattle downtown is built atop an older downtown which was almost consumed by the Great Fire of 1889. I had found out that they offered tours of this underground area, which covered about 32 blocks, so we started looking around Pioneer Square (a must visit) and thereabouts to find an entrance to this underground market. There were some 'deceiving' doors leading to underground places just off the street, but most of them were locked or they housed some modern art gallery by the name the 'underground cellar' and the like.

Finally we chanced upon a wizened Chinese caretaker of a downtown garden, who seemed as old as the Great Fire itself and posed the question to him. After what seemed to be an hour of rambling on about 1st Avenue and some other street, we could finally decipher from his talk that Seattle underground was not accessible to all and sundry at anytime as we had thought, but you had to be part of tour that took people down during particular times of the day, and it started somewhere near the 1st Ave or the 1st street and he told us that maybe we were too late for a tour now since it seemed well past morning anyway. Well, Seattle underground will remain a mystery forever, we thanked the caretaker and left.

We walked around Pioneer Square a bit, it looked like the Saturday market in our city, except that here it was held in a place which was more akin to fairgrounds, and in Seattle was a city square, flanked by old brick buildings with ivy growing on them, cobbled stone grounds and an old world pavilion adding to its historical aura. Nice place to hang out if you had enough time. There were lots of artists and painters selling their wares, really good quality stuff for which you didn't have to dish out the art-gallery price.

Our next stop was Pike's Place Market (<< a must visit), the original farmers' market which has now turned into one of Seattle's top attractions. Yes, we did see the 'fish throwing guy', along with many other vendors of fresh produce and fish. Pike's place market also has an underground section which is fully operational. Pike's Place market gave an impression of a similar market in India, maybe a little more orderly and a little less crowded.

We hung out for a while at an Irish pub overlooking the market and the sea beyond, then headed towards the seaside park to 'catch the beat of the city'. A guy was playing saxophone sitting on a bench nearby, for his own pleasure, looking every bit like Stevie Wonder. Seemed like all the people in the park were either bums sharing joints and having drinks out of Pepsi bottles or tourists like us who were photographing everything in sight.

An hour at the park and we realized that our 3 hour parking permit was almost getting over and we headed back. We decided to drive towards Alki Point(<< a must visit, off the beaten path) which was one of those off the beaten path spots, frequented more by locals than the tourists. Alki Point promised a great view of Seattle skyline, but all we knew was that it was way out on the western tip of city, facing downtown. with no definite directions to lead us towards it. Anyway after an hour of exploring various roads we reached Alki Point just as the sun went down and what a gorgeous view it was! There was a pathway along the waterfront, a few benches here and there and it was pretty quiet except for the occasional jogger or somebody walking their dog. Right in front of us, across the water was the night skyline of Seattle in all its glory. Thus ended our day two.


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Sep 3, 2003


The Road Trip - Part 1(Washington) Seattle
(Not the movie !!!) 



Journey is a revelation in itself and when it comes to revelations, road trips are the best. What can beat an eight hour drive from midnight till morning, riding high on caffeine,watching light blobs speed past at eighty miles an hour, listening to snores from passenger side and mindless croons on the FM, your car on cruise and the only working part of your body being your hands on the steering wheel, that has to be the best pose for receiving a revelation.

And where else in the world is a better place to undertake a roadtrip than a nation whose religion is motoring and peopled by denizens whose lives are goverened by commute times, gas prices and automobiles - yes, the good old US of A. How long can you hold off the lure of millions of miles of asphalt, disposable cars and cheap gas prices and ofcourse not forgetting the endless hours of watching the Travel Channel on exploring and discovering the North American continent. Finally, we succumbed to the temptation this September and here we are at the threshold of a West Coast Discovery Road Trip, trying hard to keep our eyes open after a four hour red eye flight from Anchorage, Ak to Seattle-Tacoma, Wa.

It was 6AM PST, we were at Seattle-Tacoma (Seatac) Airport , haggling at a Hertz (rental car operators) counter. Like all the web savy people out there we had booked our rental car from one of those websites which competes to offer you the best deals in the universe. The deal was not bad, if not the best in the galaxy, but we thought it included a GPS in the car, which the Hertz employees assured us always came at an additional charge. But then what is a Global Positioning System compared to weeks of research, printed maps and info and extra good human navigational ability, eh? That meant a no for GPS and some extra dollars saved right at the start of our trip. Ain't we brilliant or what?!!?!!!

Two huge suitcases heaved into the trunk of a white Ford Taurus and we were ready to go. But where do we go? The hotel check-in time was around 3pm, that meant we had 7-8 hours before we could harbor any thoughts of a nice rest and a warm shower. While driving towards Seattle from Seatac we could see the famous Space Needle from a distance and we decided to make a beeline for it.

The Space Needle along with various other attractions are housed in a complex called the Seattle Center . Yeah, it is the center of Seattle as far as tourists are concerned, even on a working day like today we saw many ambling about with nothing better to do. We parked the car in one of the one hour curb side parking spots near the Seattle Center, decided to walk around a bit and find a place to grab some breakfast.

Seattle looked a bit like San Francisco, but it was different at the same time. Maybe it was because of the roads with steep gradients reminded me of SF, here most of them sloped down directly towards the waterfront. A couple of blocks down we found a place called Cafe Minnie's (now closed) (101 Denny Way), a 24 hour restaurant, which looked ok and showed the possibility of offering us a decent meal at an affordable price. The crowd inside looked ok too, there were a few cops and some office goers, which meant that it was a place favored by locals and then a few wide eyed tourists like us. We had pancakes, omlette with some italian sauce, cocoa and orange juice, with the tip it came around twenty dollars, not bad considering the close proximity of tourist spot.


Reparked the car at a three hour spot a few blocks away, that gave us enough time to roam around. The entry fee to (click on the link if you want to know more about Space Needle) Space Needle is $12.50 per person.They also offer you deal where you can buy tickets to 5-6 'touristy' things like Space Needle, a ferry ride in the Puget Sound, Seattle Aquarium, Pacific Science Center etc for a $80 or so, which would be cheaper than buying individual tickets if you intend to visit all these places.

What were you supposed to do on top on Space Needle ? Walk around the observation deck taking in a birds eye view of Seattle, there is an inhouse guide who'll narrate the history and point out various Seattle landmarks for you, if you have an extra heavy purse, splurge on a $5 latte at the rooftop cafe and when all is said and done, come down to earth on one of the elevators doing 500 feet drops in 43 seconds.

We took a 10 minute monorail ride (2 way for $3) to the International District and back. The monorail wiggles its way between the highrises and is a purely tourist thing. Next stop, Experience Music Project (EMP) (<< must visit)  founded by one of the founders of Microsoft, Paul Allen. Housed in a modernist building sculpture conceived by architect Frank Gehry, its a must visit for all the music afficianados. The collection of music memorobilia and the exibits are really impressive and you also get to go behind the scenes and make your own music, I liked the second part the best. The admission costs $20 per head and you can come back anytime during the day you purchased the ticket. Check out EMP here

A full day exploring Seattle Center culminated in a drive to Everett, about 30 miles north of Seattle, where we had booked our hotel. This again was a move towards staying cheap but decent. Stricly acting upon the conclusion that you tend to get better hotels at a cheaper rate when they are further away from downtown or tourist destinations and a preplanned visit to Boeing Factory at Everett being on our agenda, prompted our decision to stay at Extended StayAmerica at Everett, Wa.

Ofcourse we, like typical Indians had some home cooked food(this was the first time we were carrying food on a trip, otherwise we used to scoff at such people and their insistence on eating 'home cooked meals') with us, which required a micorwave, that meant we needed a suite not just a room. It was $54 for a suite, with microwave, dataport, fridge and a queen size bed. By the time we checked in, we were only too grateful to hit the sack at about 6 o'clock. That winded up our first day in Seattle and the first day of our road trip.

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