Day 0 - Packing day
After a very stressful week at work I left late, but happy on Friday night with all of the big fires under control and feeling like I could go away for a little over a week without worrying about coming back to a disaster. Quick mow of the lawn as soon as I got home so we don' get fined while we are away (so it is nice to live in an area that looks like Stepford but there is a price to pay).
Then onto packing, which is tight as it costs $20 each way per checked bag
Travel tip #1 - Have at least a couple of maximum carry on size suitcases and make use of the 1 carry on bag plus 1 laptop bag allowance. If we weren't taking toiletries then we could pretty much have made it without any check in bags. The other tip is to pack bags using advanced packing techniques. My own packing ability is somewhere between Girl Packer and TARDIS master - for those not familiar with these levels of packing ability see below.
Girl Packer
Simply form a pile in the center of the suitcase, preferably of things that will be of no use whatsoever where you are headed, for example a ballgown when camping - just in case.
TARDIS Master Simply by negating the positive charge on the protons of the elements within the packed materials the atoms become free to move more closely together and provided you are not packing uranium 239 a small suitcase can easily accommodate the contents of the average house without attaining critical mass. Seasoned travelers may also use a bag of holding.
Anyway, onto the holiday itself...
Day 1 -
6:30am flight time so it was all up at 4:15, which bizarrely the kids seem to love as much as the holiday itself; it must be the feeling that an adventure is about to start and I can see their point of view - especially if you haven't got anything to organize. Luckily the kids are such good travelers by now that a 3.5 hour flight is easy - it's actually pretty fun and I've traveled with business colleagues who are harder work. Seattle is dominated (on the 90 days a year when it isn't raining) by Mt Rainier, the highest mountain on the North American continent. We got a pretty good view as we came in.
Because of the time difference we've got out hire car by 8:45am and head into the city center without much of a plan as to what we'll do when we get there. Like cathedrals of old when trying to find the center of the town we end up heading for the tallest building we can see, in this case the Space Needle. By the time we've found somewhere to park and walked over we're all ravenous as it's been 8 hours since we last ate. I've read that the Space Needle is pretty expensive to go up but that it's free if you eat in the revolving restaurant, and that the cheapest time to do this is for breakfast or brunch; so we throw my normal tight spending regime out the window and head up for brunch. This turns out to the probably the very best thing you can do once you step off the plane - a 2 hour sit down with really excellent food (whereas you might expect it to be overpriced and not that good given the location) and limitless soft drinks which goes down very well when everyone is a little dehydrated - plus of course you get to see the whole city.
After that we found this fantastic fountain and spent a while there with the kids getting somewhat damp.
Then we wandered around the nearby area of the city for a while, coming across a few interesting things like a mini-maze
Becky here is modeling Andy's top.
And this funky building is the Science Center
It was also the first time the kids have really come across homelessness which they found quite upsetting (not that there aren't homeless people in Minnesota but the temperature doesn't lend itself to being outdoors most of the year).
Our hotel was in Redmond which is across a closed bridge so we ended up taking a bit of a detour through Washington's wine country - a mini glimpse of California really.
The hotel was great too, made even better by the fact that I'd remembered to bring an HDMI lead, there was a flat panel in the room and we could stream movies and cartoons through my laptop to the TV, and we discovered 36 Shaun the Sheep cartoons we hadn't seen. These would come in handy later as child bribery, e.g. (when on a long hike) if you don't moan for the next 10 minutes we can have an extra Shaun the Sheep tonight.
