Full circles

Our Seattle explorations began with a bookshop, unsurprisingly.  Pike Place market is a big thing to go and see in the centre of town and there's lots of locally owned stalls and small shops, and one of these was a lovely used book store where we found weird novels and justified buying them because we've finished and passed on the same amount since we started our travels.

Sometimes you really remember a book by where you were when you read it.  Listening to Gormenghast audios on windswept Northumbrian moors may have scarred J for life.  But you never really realise until a bit later.  Wonder what reading Grapes of Wrath by roadsides in Alaska and Canada or Thucydides on Wreck Beach is going to have left us with associations of...

Near the market there is also the original Starbucks store.  And, no kidding, there's a queue around the block.  And it appears to be just to BUY COFFEE, not kick the CEO in the face, which we could understand.

That evening we went to see a very interesting film at a social centre near where we were staying.  It was about resistance amongst the Mohawk First Nation in Canada and is well worth watching if you're interested.  Especially to see how in Quebec, an area so politically fixated on sovereignity, how hard they kicked down on the First Nations originally from that area.

The next day we went out to an area called Ballard for a seafood festival.  Free samples and crabmeat ensued and by about 3pm J had managed to make herself a bit sick.  It was worth it for the gumbo and free fudge.  So, complaining loudly in J's case, we set off on a walk through Fremont.

In the 90s this was a very hip, arty, edgy, 'now' kind of place and kept calling itself the centre of the universe, or the people's republic of Fremont.  Sounds horrible, I hear you cry, but they very successfully made it worse!  Now it's commercial and feeding off when it USED to be hip, arty, edgy, and 'now'.  Wow.  Makes Camden look genuine.  There are various public art projects, including a genuine cold war missile made to look like a rocket.  It's ironic, apparently.  It's ok to be ironic about nuclear missiles now, without anything actually imaginative or thought-provoking being involved.

An artist from the neighbourhood rescued a statue of Lenin after the fall of the Soviet Union.  (Fox news was very upset).  They also have a troll under a bridge.  Guess which is Vlad.

My Dad actually did warn me about his type- J

 Food Not Bombs were giving away free food that evening so we decided we maybe weren't quite too full for Free and headed down.  There seems to be a lot of homeless people in Seattle, even more so than Vancouver, and the city council seem to be cutting back on shelters and leaving a lot of support work up to people like Food Not Bombs or NGOs.  A lot of people at the meal seemed to be homeless but not all and there was a good mix and people talking to each other.

Monday we had a lie in and cooked a meal, and then found the Seattle International Film Festival's Cinema, as a director we know and like has a new film, The Invisible War.  It's about sexual abuse and rape in the US Armed Forces.  Depressing watching but really, really good.

After one more night in Seattle where we had a few drinks and chatted with our host and his other guests, we headed off the next day to the start of Highway 101.  Seattle is only 3 hours from Portland on the Interstate, but Interstates are boring right?  Plus 101 required us to visit Aberdeen.  The title of this post was partly referring to that, and partly to coming back to where we flew to Alaska from.  All new territory south of here :).  Aberdeen, it turns out, is grey, cold, smells like fish and is full of unemployment and empty buildings.  So pretty much true to its heritage, except having a much greater claim to fame because Nirvana are from there.

In the end it took us fifteen hours (with lunch breaks) to wend our way down through the mists, across the imposing bridge that spans the Columbia river estuary and down to Portland.  The drive was very pretty though- we'll look forward to rejoining 101 later.  We managed to get to our host's place in Portland and today have been finding fun places to explore over the next few days.