Right from the first day I started blogging I knew the title of this post. Obvious really.
Seattle is an amazingly clean and well laid out city. This makes me think that the people who designed it had OCD. We wanted to find somewhere to park near the Space Needle and there were plenty of ‘Private’ car parks charging $10 for ten minutes.
Right opposite, and I mean directly opposite the entrance to the Space needle we spotted a parking space, so we decided to chance street parking. One danger here is not to face the wrong way as you may get a ticket or even towed. We learned this from a local lady who I stopped to ask and she had been towed.
She also suggested looking for little signs everywhere that have obscure rules and are easy to break. Nervous, we parked on the other side, the right way round this time.
I checked out the meter and we had little change, bummer. I stopped another guy and asked him if he had any . He didn’t but he offered to let us park in his parking space outside his office! What a gentleman. We didn’t know how long we were going to stay , so politely turned down the offer, but how cool was he.
Around the famous Space Needle there are lots of other attractions including the EMP – a music and sci-fi museum, a childrens museum and others. One downer is that each of these costs $20+ per adult and $13+ per child and there are NO family tickets.
There is a cool fountain however and just down the street is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Headquarters and Exhibition, so we went and had a look. They are doing some amazing things.
I may not be thanked for saying it but I have to say that I am very impressed with Bill Gates. I would much rather that the people who have billions of dollars are people like Bill, who gain satisfaction by spending money on solving the world’s problems.
The alternative is playboys and dictators who blitz cash having a good time and the non-stop acquisition of ever more expensive material goods.
Bill, you can have all my money, bar the first £20 million when I die.
By now, we were getting border fever. This is the experience you get when you have spent 16 days travelling round the US and are within a hundred miles of the border. There is an overwhelming urge to cross it, so we got in the car and headed to the border.
Unlike the crossing to get into the US, the Canadian border is a different experience. No fingerprints, no visa required, and guess what, we showed them the apples we just bought and mentioned that we didn’t know where they were from and the Border Guard shrugged and said “no worries.”
The other difference is the queue. There are evidently more people trying to get out of America than get in…
Once we crossed the border we headed for Langley, Vancouver our stop for the night.
Oh, one more thing. Fill up with gasoline before you leave the US!