Seattle Sojurn

This past year has been the year of travel. Managed to travel from Delhi to Lucknow via Uttaranchal all by bus. Then a trip to Bangalore, 2 trips to Hong Kong, 3 trips to Lucknow, Trip to US, Charlotte, New York capped by a visit to Seattle. Its a miserably long flight from Charlotte to Seattle. When planes take 6 hours to get you from coast to coast its then that one realizes the sheer size of USA. So there I am, mere 4 days after freezing in New York, in balmy Seattle. First the cabin crew announces some security breach and tells us that subway aint running, then tells us we can't disembark! after arnd 20 min of drama on the craft, sitting on asphalt we are finally let off.
Ah coffee. Now that Seattle is the town for coffee is something I learnt a bit later (tho why??? I mean why shd coffee and Seattle be connected. Columbia - Ok, Indonesia ok, why Seattle???). While waiting for sis dear to come and pick me up I manage to grab a coffee and loose my credit card. Arggghhhh!!!!
Anyways, a little while later I was introduced to this quaint little place called the Fishermen's market. I've noticed this thing about US. They do manage to take quaint places and make it quainter. This market is essentially a trinkets/food market with insane crowd. There is a lot to eat! There is also the first Starbucks that opened here. It was too crowded for me to venture inside so I had to forgo my usual capucino. Ah a bulb blinks inside my head. So thats why Seattle is called the coffee place!
Out of the teeming places and we hit to the space needle. Funny name but the building is quite striking. Did I mention this was an extended weekend? Nah I didnt, so well what do u expect on an extended weekend but crowds? We hence plonked into this museum nearby and that of all the places turns out closed! Museums anyway are a long drawn affair. After generally lolling about the place, we finally hit home.
Next day I managed to get to another place which had a Now I've seen a lot of waterfalls, many quite high and once in Langkawi, even swum a bit in the pool below - try fresh water swimming if you haven't, its quite fun; it was the first time that I had a water spray hitting me while being above the fall itself. Awesome!
Like most places American, the fine folks had made nice pathways to generally mess around and we duly did that. Localites, please note, make me run a few kilometers everyday, I can do with more stamina. I do miss those chaiwallahs that you get at every corner in India. Here we are on a wet day, sitting next to a fall and no tea in sight. Gaah. "Kabhi kissi to mukkamal jahan nahin milta...". I think it'll work wonders if we can send like 20% of our population to US. They get the critical mass for these and we get some breathing space.
Anyways so we generally roamed around, spending quality family time. Seattle is the kind of city that you need to live in to appreciate. No I don't mean coming to terms with the rains. Rather the charm here is really in the museums, the marina on lake Washington, the city spaces and so, things you can't really do in a rushed holiday and enjoy. So if you really want to enjoy Seattle, spend a few days here, pick up a job with good stock ops, laze on the Marina and life will be good. Amen