Hotel: Marriott (Waterfront) $199 pp per night. ****
Temp: 6-11 rainy and windy
Must sees: Pike Market and Space Needle.
City of grunge? North Western American high-tech old frontier town? Jewel of the Sound? Home of Mount Rainer and Peugeot Sound? Sparkling? Meandering? Hilly? Charming? Rebellious? Complex yet easy going? Suprising yet contradictory? Yes.Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And home of the eccentric Pike market. Oh yes indeed.
I'm here in Seattle and have been slowly reeled in and captivated by its charming complexity. While still showing all the tell tail signs of one of the US's biggest cities with its yellow taxi parade, phalanx of homeless people and billowing Chevies, Humvees and Uts Seattle seems to have a lot more to offer than meets the eye. While famous for Microsoft and Starbucks, Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain it also is home to Pike Market which is the oldest continuous market in the nation. It was set up in 1907 to give fishmongers the opportunity to bypass middle men and sell straight to the public but quickly grew and attracted a home for bakers, florists, farmers, butchers and cheese makers. Nowadays it also includes book shops, cafes, arts and crafts sellers, buskers and artists. Each day approximately 40,000 visitors travel to this haven of colour and noise on the downtown waterfront of Seattle's city centre and soak in the atmosphere of the lively and infectiously happy demeanor of the stall owners and artists. It's very hard not to leave without a healthy injection of positivism pulsating in the veins. Touching a little on the art deco of Greenwich village, the cramped but colourful feel of Meeting House Square of Temple Bar on a bright Saturday afternoon and the madness of Thailand's Chengmai's midnight markets its buzzing with activity and theming with loads of great bargains. I ate some wild Peugeot Sound raw crab and a cinnamon and apple crep on my first visit and also bought some Albert Camus, Alphonse Mucha, Peter Tchaikovsky and George Carver postcards for my apartment back in Dublin. If left to my own devices and with a small pocket full of change and an hour to kill I'm sure my bag would have been heavier and the souls of my feet lighter.
