The apartment
It's spacious (something we're still getting used to). It's a 2, 2 1 and has plenty of storage.
It looks something like this:
The kitchen, can you gauge the size of the oven and the microwave... They are both ginormous! However, there was no kettle. Two Lankans, making tea in the microwave? I think not. A quick trip to Costco - and can you see our brand new purchase in the left corner?
The bedroom
The living room
Bellevue
Bellevue is about 20 minutes east of Seattle and our temporary home. We're here for about 2 months at least. It's quieter than Seattle proper but still has great shopping (a mall on every corner) and a beautiful park. Bellevue Square, the slightly upmarket shopping centre and home of fancy clothing stores, also has a Teavana, America's answer to T2. Not quite as awesome but definitely something to fill the void. I'm not sure we'll live here but it's a lovely place to be, and central enough to get to places. Nuwan is most likely going to be working here, so it's important it's nice.
The rain (we know you're wondering about it)
Look what I caught on camera today.....blue sky!
I thought you might be reluctant to believe us unless we showed you proof. Truth be told the weather is actually quiet pleasant, very similar to London. Very often, there's four seasons in one day. Yesterday started of drizzly, we drove to Redmond in sunshine, walked into Costco in the wind and came out in pouring rain. It was fine and sunny by the time we walked out again.
The food (we were wondering about this)
So far so good. We went to Costco... did you know that Seattle is the home of Costco? Well it is and we went yesterday and got about a year's supply of trash bags, amongst other things.
Trash bags = bin bags or garbage bags, not scantily clad females with loose morals
We've found a fabulous Asian grocery called Uwajimaya, it's all the shops in Flemo stuck together and has just about everything we needed. It even had curry leaves!
We also found an Indian spice shop that had a small Larich section... imagine my excitement at seeing Larich in Seattle!
Seattle is also big on locally produced, organic and sustainably sourced produce. Everything here is about being green, about saving the environment and about eating only happy animals, something I find quite easy to deal with. Even the taxis are Prius....this I could get used to.
The people
We've not encountered many but everyone I've encountered is kind and helpful. The other day I asked a shelf stacker at Safeway where the handwashing liquid was and she stopped what she was going and led me to the right aisle and spot....talk about service.
Driving on the other side of the road (I need to stop saying...wrong side)
Look at Nuwan's serious driving face.
This is more Nuwan's domain, I haven't driven yet. I have been in the passenger seat which I consider pretty brave. It's confusing, the right turn is the easy one the left the one where you have to watch for oncoming traffic. When you reverse you have to turn your head right and you check your blindspot to the left when overtaking, and to look at your rearview mirror you have to flick your eyes up and to the right.
Nuwan says that each time he gets behind the wheel it gets better. I'm hoping the same is true for me!
The city (Seattle proper)
Seattle is a harbour city and the most iconic building is this.... a Space Needle
We haven't visited it but we saw it out of our car. Surely that counts for something.
We've only visited one part of the city, the famous Pike Place Markets.
Pike Place Markets is a market located on Elliot Bay. Named after the street it runs along, it has everything from flowers to fish, to second-hand books and beads. It goes down as well as up and has levels and levels of shops and stalls. The only rule in the market is that everything sold has to be local.It has no chain stores except for one, Starbucks (one of Seattles own too) because this is the first one. It's always busy and from the looks of it always has a bluegrass band outside.
It's famous for its fish stalls, with singing fishmongers and flying fish. It's an amazing place and full of fresh vegies and lot of good things to eat like sourdough bread and habanero and raspberry jam.
The vibe
It's hard to sum this up with what we've seen but here are some salient points
- Seattle is politically left-leaning Democrat
- It's focused on sustainability - down to its green cabs
- It has a proud food culture that prides itself on using local, sustainable ingredients. If your chef doesn't know the name of the chicken that laid our egg....well then that's just not cricket.
- You can buy everything organic and sometimes it's harder to find non-organic produce.
- It's very multicultural
Tomorrow we hit the outlet malls and spend a bit more time exploring Seattle itself.
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